(no subject)
Very happy (belated) birthday wishes to mienai2401 and kallistei! ♥ I hope it was wonderful. :)
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WOW.
I had hoped, but I am still rather amazed that Obama really is going ahead with endorsing some serious policies regarding energy efficiency, automobile fuel efficiency & the promotion of energy independence.
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This weekend, I saw two movies on my long list of current films I want to see:
Frost/Nixon - excellent film, directed by Ron Howard, and well-acted by Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost. Not knowing enough about Nixon, I wonder how fair it is to him - but the film doesn't glorify Frost either - his lackadaisical attitude until nearly the end defied his enormous personal stake in the project. A journalist points out early on that one of the major reasons that the Frost interviews succeeded is because Frost understood television in a way that none of the rest of them did, and so therefore, at the crucial moment, Nixon's expressions were captured and immortalized to be played and replayed and remembered for decades. Even Nixon's admissions in the interviews couldn't be as powerful as seeing the emotions that crossed his face.
Two sidenotes: 1) I could not get used to Matthew Macfadyen as blonde, and 2) there was a look exchanged early on between Frost & Nixon's aide, Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon) that was curious, possibly suggestive, but the film never goes there, so who knows?
The Wrestler - directed by Darren Aronofsky (who also directed Pi & The Fountain as well as Requiem for a Dream), this is definitely one of the best American films I've seen recently. A searing portrait of a has-been professional wrestler, this is neither a come-back film nor one of redemption. It will completely defy your expectations. Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, is extraordinarily convincing as a gravelly-voiced, leathery-skinned hulk of an anti-hero. His story is intense and painfully human, rooted largely in a visceral first-person perspective that ties us as the viewer deeply into his world where he claws to remain relevant.
I love how the film addresses the difficulties and dilemmas of aging when your livelihood is based on your body, and I particularly loved the parallels between Randy and Pam, Marisa Tomei's stripper character, who also uses her body for a kind of theater, just as Randy does when he participates in the weekly staged wrestling matches. Randy and Pam are friends of a sort, although she makes it clear that she can't let herself think of him as anything more than a customer - because despite their rapport, that's what he has been for her, for years, it seems - a customer.
The differences between them are stark. While Pam is still very beautiful, the young men at bachelor parties don't want her anymore (they taunt her by telling her it's like having their mom for strip for them), and while Aronofsky never hits us over the head with Pam's difficulties as an aging stripper, it's there, plain to see in the rejections as she cruises the floor offering private dances. But as we discover later in the film, Pam thinks of herself as a mother first (she has a nine year old boy), and she does what she does because it's all she has been able to do - and she wants to leave the stripper life as soon as she can.
Randy, on the other hand, thinks of himself as a wrestler first. He is The Ram, and even though he does try to walk away from his wrestling life after a major health catastrophe, he carries "The Ram" around with him all the time - even as he works a deli counter, he psychs himself up for it the same way he psyched himself up for each wrestling match (I love how the camera follows along behind him that first day on the new job, and the sound of cheering fans that Randy hears just before he walks out to the deli counter) - and on his good days, he's buoyant and entertaining as he "performs" for the people waiting to order their Virginia ham and potato salad.
The film is very moving, particularly as we see Randy struggle to connect with his long-estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) - I particularly love his clumsy attempt to do something kind for her, to demonstrate his long-absent affection by presenting her with a gift of an ugly bright green shiny satin jacket with an "S" on the front; the "S" he tells her, stands for her name, Stephanie. Her stunned, polite response of "it's shiny" made me smile just as I shook my head (thank goodness he also brought out the coat that Pam had chosen, which made a more appropriate gift, and one that Stephanie seemed to like as well, considering she wore it immediately). I love the scenes with Randy and Stephanie walking around an old New Jersey boardwalk while Randy reminds her of scenes from her childhood, things she has long forgotten or perhaps never remembered, and we begin to see that Randy did love her, and does love her, but-
"But" is really the end of most positive and kind observations I could make about Randy. He's a great guy, except when he isn't. He could have been a loving father, but he wasn't, and when he tries to reconnect with his daughter, it's too little too late - when she gives him a second chance and he blows it, there are no more chances left. He wants so much to make human connections, to not be alone, but he is forever clumsy (no matter how well-intentioned) and the patterns of his life cannot be escaped. He faces rejection and disrespect nearly everywhere outside his wrestling life - wrestling, no matter how dangerous and painful, fills him with life and exhilaration, and when he hears the fans cheer him on, it fulfills his desperate need for human connections that he has failed to make and find elsewhere in life.
It's a sad film, but brilliantly executed, and well-worth seeing.
A++++