We have all, in times of desparation or boredom or lack of anything to watch on television, entertained the thought of winning the lottery. "What would we buy?" we ask ourselves and each other, turning the illusion of money into a cathartic session of day-dreaming. And yet imagine if on one quiet snowy afternoon, three people stumbled across the quintissential lottery: 4$ million dollars in a snow-covered plane (complete with rotting dead body and vicious pack of crows). Can you dream up the troubles a group of people would face when in possession of riches? The sterling, white-knuckle tense answer is: neither can they. A Simple Plan, directed by Sam Raimi and written by Scott Smith (who wrote the book on which it is based), views its four central characters - Hank (Bill Paxton), Jacob (Billy Bob Thorton), Sarah (Bridget Fonda), and Lou (Brent Briscoe) - through a prism of morally complex curiousity; in effect, the sickening pull of the film is watch and wonder at just how far, and how far down, these men (and their wives, as in the case of Hank's spouse, Sarah) are willing to go to protect their money. Instead of the usual cat versus mouse (where we as an audience are pre-programmed to jack into the psyches of a predetermined "good guy") we get the far more uncertain (and in that uncertainty, bold energy and skill) premise of man versus morality; the age-old question of at which point does the buck stop?
To Lou, it doesn't. Showing up not days after having secured the money with Hank - since they've all agreed to wait it out 'till Spring before dividing up the cash - he wastes no time in revealing himself to Hank (his grand revelation has something to do with a more macabre aspect of their scheme and much more with Hank's guilt-complex), to which Hank responds with a devious plan of his own...all leading to one of many spasmic, anxious, bouts of violence, perfectly contained in the gothic-chamber vision of a quiet Northern town. The scenes surrounding the Lou against Hank scenario, just the first of many unanticipated turns, are great when viewed first-hand, for the first time, but become near genius in retrospect. See, the cinematic thrust of A Simple Plan - the thing that renders watching and siding with these "criminals" such compulsive, shivering delight - is in the way Smith's script trains our eyes on the small details of relationships and then lets us watch those same tweaks and hair-pin fractures erupt and explode. Billy Bob Thorton's performance is the perfect example. His character, Jacob, begins as the naieve counter-part to Hank. But as the film goes on, bodies, blood, and rationalizations piling up, he morphs before our very eyes. Part of this is due to Thorton's grand, unasuming performance but the greater portion of credit goes to the way the film sets up his relationships with women, his brother, and his friends so as to ensnare us in a web of lies, deceit, and blood as complex as his is.
As crime thrillers go, Plan may have a dated premise darting around its edges but the steely, surreal, elegant manner in which it is brought off eleminates all doubt that this isn't one heck of an original invention. But who would have expected any less from novelist-turned-screenwriter Smith? His two books, this film's source material and The Ruins, are famous for their lacerating psychological clarity and dark anti-climaxes, both of which A Simple Plan has in spades. The most deviously shocking moment of mental relapse occurs early on when Sarah, first realizing the money that has quite literally dropped into her lap, throws her high-horse moral posturing to the dogs with a split-second laugh of the coldest, most piercing, most intense insanity. Pretty soon after that she's become yet another piece of the puzzle; another scheming, ambitious piece. The puzzle they all eventually form is right up there with the most bleak of Smith's (and probably Raimi's) work; suffice to say the Oscar nod he got for the work he put out in adapting his own work was quiet well deserved.
So too was the nod for Billy Bob Thorton, and even more deserved (but even less espoused) were kudos for the raw, stylistically violent, clockwork cool direction from Sam Raimi. Now famous as the schlocky writer-director of the mega-huge-ultimate Spider-Man franchise, he once enjoyed the spotlight as creator of the Evil Dead films. Somewhere in between there though - from indie to infamous - he ascended ever so briefly as a very mature, very talented filmmaker. The cast around him, and the film around them, blossoms in response, flowering into a treat for cinephiles and bibliophiles (for who among the literary crowd won't bodily respond to the verbal skill at work here, from characterization to dialogue exchanges, in a typically visually-saturated form?) alike; a taunt, lean master class in the art of spellbinding and suprising your audience...or in a word, thrilling them.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Wicked: B+
What drove the Wicked Witch of the West? What motivated her to wear those horrendous black skirts? Why did she train a legion of animal followers to do her bidding? Why was she the sole green woman in a land of midgets? And why was she so deathly allergic to water? These are some of the central questions kicked around by author Gregory Maguire in his grandly allegorical, philisophically murky Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. In Wicked the future "fiend" is born as Elphaba in a quiet town located squarely in the province of Munchkinland to a zealot father and a morally unscrupulous mother. She is green and her features are sharp, angular, and as fearsome as a pair of scissors. Oddly enough her birth almost exactly coincides with the ascendence of the Glorious Wizard down into the Emerald City - the capital of Oz, her home.
And if this sounds all alittle quiet, rote even, things get pumping in quick fashion. It turns out the Wizard isn't a kindly, bumbling, old man (a la the '39 movie version); instead he is a politically wily despot who, flying down from the sky on his famous red hot-air balloon, quickly stirs up a coup and takes the reigns from the Ozma Regent and his ruling family. Such a shocker! But having changed an iconic figure of quirky modesty and goodness into a tyrant is only the first of Maguire's tricks: he also completely re-imagines the world into which the Wizard arrives. His characters traverse all four of the major Oz provinces (from Gillikin, the rich North, to The Vinkus, the arid West) and along the way the reader is privy to the many vivid imaginings he instills in these lands. More than that he laces his entire work with a gidy cynicism and black humor. Together these two elements form a nifty little elixir of an idea (swirled together from creativity and wit) that has propulsive effect: one finds it difficult to stop reading and reading, curious to see his next inspired revisionist twist.
Anticipation proves a killer however. As the plot kicks into high gear - from Elphaba's days as an activist college student to her days of political exile to her murder - Wicked runs alittle rampant. First off, the author loses sight of his characters, specifically the larger ones. As the chief example of such oversight, our newly discovered heroine also suffers the worst; she leaps from tartly anti-social to malicious to benevolent to submissive and back again in the span of these 400-pages. It's a lurching transition every time. Furthermore her friends seem just as foggy: Avaric, the handsome snob, is a "perfect asshole" until he carries on a genial debate with the Witch near the end of the book while Glinda the Good Witch goes from shallow and likeable to merely shallow (is she a pawn? is she ignorant? does anyone care? hello?).
Lacking strong character foundations, the entire point of Maguire's story (to delve into what made the Wicked Witch "wicked") gets lost in all of his noise. The noise though is almost worth the show. Drenched in homoeroticism, skewered with irony, and set aflame over the roasting coals of giddy toxic sarcasm, the prose of Wicked seethes with tons of combustible, compulsive humor and black-hearted delight. It's a good thing too, since as a main attraction the plot serves up aces until it sputters out at the end with a clenchingly un-satisfying final few pages. I guess the jokes on Maguire then for having engaged himself and the reader on the issue of trancendentalism, the search for a soul, the root of evil, "evil" and history since he can't seem to keep steady with any serious pondering (or, gasp!, ephiphany).
Let's stop for a moment though and consider something interesting but difficult to spot: the fact that Gregory Maguire is actually a pretty proficient word smith, especially late in the book. He toys around with a metaphorical examination of the creation of icicles, spends pages on the architectural stylings of Oz-cities, and has a canny physical curiousity for his creations. As writers go, let's not go so far as to say that all there is to the author of Wicked is a neat-o-keen creativte streak but to think there's a whole lot residing under his crackling send-up would be a misreprensentation; lacking truly rounded personalities to people his pages with and a sorely needed idea of thematic closure, the novel leaves you with a mere vestige of depth...but it, as Maguire himself might say, is something.
And if this sounds all alittle quiet, rote even, things get pumping in quick fashion. It turns out the Wizard isn't a kindly, bumbling, old man (a la the '39 movie version); instead he is a politically wily despot who, flying down from the sky on his famous red hot-air balloon, quickly stirs up a coup and takes the reigns from the Ozma Regent and his ruling family. Such a shocker! But having changed an iconic figure of quirky modesty and goodness into a tyrant is only the first of Maguire's tricks: he also completely re-imagines the world into which the Wizard arrives. His characters traverse all four of the major Oz provinces (from Gillikin, the rich North, to The Vinkus, the arid West) and along the way the reader is privy to the many vivid imaginings he instills in these lands. More than that he laces his entire work with a gidy cynicism and black humor. Together these two elements form a nifty little elixir of an idea (swirled together from creativity and wit) that has propulsive effect: one finds it difficult to stop reading and reading, curious to see his next inspired revisionist twist.
Anticipation proves a killer however. As the plot kicks into high gear - from Elphaba's days as an activist college student to her days of political exile to her murder - Wicked runs alittle rampant. First off, the author loses sight of his characters, specifically the larger ones. As the chief example of such oversight, our newly discovered heroine also suffers the worst; she leaps from tartly anti-social to malicious to benevolent to submissive and back again in the span of these 400-pages. It's a lurching transition every time. Furthermore her friends seem just as foggy: Avaric, the handsome snob, is a "perfect asshole" until he carries on a genial debate with the Witch near the end of the book while Glinda the Good Witch goes from shallow and likeable to merely shallow (is she a pawn? is she ignorant? does anyone care? hello?).
Lacking strong character foundations, the entire point of Maguire's story (to delve into what made the Wicked Witch "wicked") gets lost in all of his noise. The noise though is almost worth the show. Drenched in homoeroticism, skewered with irony, and set aflame over the roasting coals of giddy toxic sarcasm, the prose of Wicked seethes with tons of combustible, compulsive humor and black-hearted delight. It's a good thing too, since as a main attraction the plot serves up aces until it sputters out at the end with a clenchingly un-satisfying final few pages. I guess the jokes on Maguire then for having engaged himself and the reader on the issue of trancendentalism, the search for a soul, the root of evil, "evil" and history since he can't seem to keep steady with any serious pondering (or, gasp!, ephiphany).
Let's stop for a moment though and consider something interesting but difficult to spot: the fact that Gregory Maguire is actually a pretty proficient word smith, especially late in the book. He toys around with a metaphorical examination of the creation of icicles, spends pages on the architectural stylings of Oz-cities, and has a canny physical curiousity for his creations. As writers go, let's not go so far as to say that all there is to the author of Wicked is a neat-o-keen creativte streak but to think there's a whole lot residing under his crackling send-up would be a misreprensentation; lacking truly rounded personalities to people his pages with and a sorely needed idea of thematic closure, the novel leaves you with a mere vestige of depth...but it, as Maguire himself might say, is something.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: A
The wonders of a great book are many, but rarely encountered; once discovered, these novels are difficult if not impossible to put down. You race and race through the pages, eyes glued to the page while the dawn approaches and you start to smell alittle like the stuff in the back of your fridge. But more than that you leap backwards and forwards over the pages, the prose, and the plot - savoring the rarely seen magnificence of a great writer turning their genius into brilliant art. This is, in more or less a small paragraph, how I felt while reading J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - a big, cathartic rush of a tale bursting with satisfaction. The achievements of Rowling's creation will be espoused about at length below but what stands monumentally to all first & foremost is her endurance in imagination; that after seven (seven!) books about a teenage wizard, she remains as she was from the start: a storyteller of breathtaking skill underscored always by her wry, bleak, mirthful intelligence.
But let us start from the beginning of this final chapter (while also trying to dodge spoiling even a tad of the unspooling events). Lord Voldemort, the serpentine spector hovering as the Big Bad for all of the series, marshals his armies still - his coming storm growing more nefarious and lethal by the day. His plans, something woven together by Rowling from Hitler to Vader, march ceaselessly onward from the very first chapter of the book; his malevolence present on nearly every page. From the opening flight to the Burrow to the triumphant return to Hogwarts at the end, the Dark Lord is there. Yet the darkening disaster that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named represents has a flaw...the Boy Who Lived - (a nearly grown) Harry Potter.
Harry still seeks the Horcruxes and he still travels with his best friends, Hermione and Ron. That his search for the dark artifacts protecting Voldemort's soul is intensely enthralling while rarely cheery is a major accomplishment; that Hermione and Ron grower deeper, more lovable as time goes on remains another; and that Harry himself has grown from symbolic savior to bedraggled teen and back again is perhaps the crowning jewel of the book. Except to say that I'd also have to discount the vivid duels, battles, escapes, break-ins, pacts, plans, and dragon flights that also occur. To say that Deathly Hallows is a narrative with a lot going for it would be an understatement; if average novels were a meal, here you will find a feast.
This extends as well to the author's keen mind and wry wit. It is and always has been a delicious treat to watch her prose scintillate with such droll humor and in her latest, though lacking much of Dolores Umbridge (much...but not all!), she rattles off more than enough deliciously dark quips and quotes to satisfy any reader looking for a laugh (though the irony of one coming here, a grand political allegory and adventure saga, for humor is almost too much to bear).
All joking aside, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is an emotionally-stirring, masterful piece of fiction and Rowling its emotionally-stirring, masterful creator. The myriad loose ends of her tale are wrapped up with minimal effort; the expected "explanations" given vivid sprucing up when they occur during oh, say, a trip down the last memory lane you'd expect. To top it all off, the final pages tell not of that climactic showdown we've waited nearly 10 years for but of the aftermath; and let it be known that this boldly domestic, even quiet, epilogue marks a perfect ending to a perfect story - one, as they say, for the ages. In the end it is with great sadness that I depart from Rowling's world yet it is with still greater joy that I think back upon it; upon a spell of happiness and wonder that breaks not even to this day.
But let us start from the beginning of this final chapter (while also trying to dodge spoiling even a tad of the unspooling events). Lord Voldemort, the serpentine spector hovering as the Big Bad for all of the series, marshals his armies still - his coming storm growing more nefarious and lethal by the day. His plans, something woven together by Rowling from Hitler to Vader, march ceaselessly onward from the very first chapter of the book; his malevolence present on nearly every page. From the opening flight to the Burrow to the triumphant return to Hogwarts at the end, the Dark Lord is there. Yet the darkening disaster that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named represents has a flaw...the Boy Who Lived - (a nearly grown) Harry Potter.
Harry still seeks the Horcruxes and he still travels with his best friends, Hermione and Ron. That his search for the dark artifacts protecting Voldemort's soul is intensely enthralling while rarely cheery is a major accomplishment; that Hermione and Ron grower deeper, more lovable as time goes on remains another; and that Harry himself has grown from symbolic savior to bedraggled teen and back again is perhaps the crowning jewel of the book. Except to say that I'd also have to discount the vivid duels, battles, escapes, break-ins, pacts, plans, and dragon flights that also occur. To say that Deathly Hallows is a narrative with a lot going for it would be an understatement; if average novels were a meal, here you will find a feast.
This extends as well to the author's keen mind and wry wit. It is and always has been a delicious treat to watch her prose scintillate with such droll humor and in her latest, though lacking much of Dolores Umbridge (much...but not all!), she rattles off more than enough deliciously dark quips and quotes to satisfy any reader looking for a laugh (though the irony of one coming here, a grand political allegory and adventure saga, for humor is almost too much to bear).
All joking aside, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is an emotionally-stirring, masterful piece of fiction and Rowling its emotionally-stirring, masterful creator. The myriad loose ends of her tale are wrapped up with minimal effort; the expected "explanations" given vivid sprucing up when they occur during oh, say, a trip down the last memory lane you'd expect. To top it all off, the final pages tell not of that climactic showdown we've waited nearly 10 years for but of the aftermath; and let it be known that this boldly domestic, even quiet, epilogue marks a perfect ending to a perfect story - one, as they say, for the ages. In the end it is with great sadness that I depart from Rowling's world yet it is with still greater joy that I think back upon it; upon a spell of happiness and wonder that breaks not even to this day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
