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Disney's Up, which is currently playing in theaters, almost brings us viewers down. In the first few moments of the film, I found myself being easily captivated by the pleasant colors, images, and sounds that accompanied my initial meeting of the main character, Carl Frederickson, a boy who idolizes a famous pilot and aspires to fly like he does. On his way home one day, he sees and enters an abandoned house, where he meets Elllie, a tomboy who shares his passion and who will eventually become his wife. What follows next is a quick succession of scenes without dialogue: their courtship and marriage, their work at a zoo, Ellie's pregnancy woes, and eventual death. We are left, then, with a curmudgeonous 78 year old version of Carl to take us through the remaining 60 minutes of the film. It was heavy. Maybe not for my 3 year old, but for me, at least. Even the ending of the film, in which Mr. Frederickson accompanies Russell, his boy scout sidekick in his adventures through South America in a house propelled by helium balloons, to the award ceremony where Russell receives his badge for helping the elderly is weighty and emotional because Russell's dad is absent. I realize Bambi's mother dies at the beginning of that classic and that the step-mother in Cinderella and the evil queen in Snow White are far from pleasant. But this film's depiction of miscarriage, aging, and mortality is not cloaked in fairytale film conventions. Don't let the pixillation fool you; this is more a film for adults that kids can enjoy than a film for kids that adults can enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the film. It's worth seeing. But it is for those who want a good dose of reality in slightly more palatable form than say the newspaper or cable TV, not for those who want to escape from it.
Pushing the Frame? When Your Favorite Actress Tangos with Taboos
I am someone whose favorite actresses are, for the most part, dead, departed, immortal on the silver screen only: I am referring to golden age Hollywood divas such as Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, and Myrna Loy. My list of living breathing favorites, if I must admit to having one, includes Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Kristen Scott Thomas, Marisa Tomei, and Kate Winslet.
Kidman, Moore, and Winslet in particular have taken on some interesting, even unconventional, roles. Kidman, for instance, conquered titillating and kinky in her performance in Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut. As Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown in Steven Daldry’s 2002 film The Hours, Kidman and Moore respectively have both played lesbians-on-the-brink. And Winslet more than pulled off eccentric and quirky as Clementine Kruczynski in Charlie Kaufman’s 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
In more recent years, however, this triumphant trio has done what one might call, instead of pushing the envelope, pushing the frame, taking on roles in films that call for taboo scenes that depict either sex with a minor or incest. In the 2004 film Birth, Kidman’s character Anna engages in sexually suggestive scenes with a 10-year old boy, played by Cameron Bright, whom she believes to be her dead husband Sean reincarnated. In the 2008 film The Reader, Kate Winslet’s character Hanna, who is every bit of 30, initiates a love affair with the 15 year-old schoolboy, Michael Berg.
But what prompted this post, in fact, is Julianne Moore’s role in Tom Kalin’s 2007 film Savage Grace, which was released on DVD not long ago. In this film she portrays Barbara Daly Baekeland, the hopeful starlet turned socialite who married the grandson heir of the Bakelite plastic fortune and wound up having a sexual relationship with their only son, Antony, in what was allegedly a last ditch effort to cure him of homosexuality. The film takes its title from the biography of Barbara written in the early 1980’s shortly after Antony’s suicide (though some have raised the possibility of murder) on March 20, 1981. By midway through the film, once Antony reaches adulthood, scenes suggestive of sexual tension between mother and son become more frequent, until they finally culminate in the final scene, the climax if you will, in which Deborah straddles her son and engages in intercourse with him. Moments later, in accordance with actual events from November 17, 1972, Antony murders his mother in the kitchen of their London flat, calls the police, and orders Chinese carry-out, Lo Mein to be exact, no joke.
Of all the films briefly discussed in this post, Savage Grace shocks and disturbs the most. There is something so genuine, tender, and effortless about Moore’s performance; try as she may to orchestrate perfectly all personal and social events in her and her son’s life, Moore’s Barbara seems oddly more victim than perpetrator of the circumstances of her life. And yet we so plainly and instantly recognize how immoral, unethical, and criminal her behavior is. I wonder how Moore felt as a mother herself portraying such a troubled and sinister maternal figure. Savage Grace provides some redemption by counterpoint to the depiction of Joan Crawford in Frank Perry’s 1981 film Mommie Dearest. And it’s definitely worth a watch.
The Abbreviated Joy of Joy Division's Ian Curtis
This past May 18th marked the 19th anniversary of the death of Ian Curtis, a Cheshire, England native and the lead singer of the post-punk band Joy Division, whose life was recently immortalized in the 2008 film Control. The film is based largely on the memoir of Curtis' wife Deborah, his high school girlfriend whom he married in 1975; at the time he was 19 and she a mere 18. He joined Joy Division in 1976 after meeting two of his future band members, who were in search of a vocalist, at a Sex Pistols concert. Her burgeoning career was halted when Curtis committed suicide by hanging himself in his kitchen at the age of 23, leaving behind his wife; daughter Natalie; lover Annik Honore; band members Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris; and a swelling number of fans. Following his death, his fellow band members went on to form New Order.
Before watching the film recently, I perused some Youtube clips of the actual band playing live, which deepened my appreciation for Sam Riley's portrayal of Curtis. In Riley's reincarnation, Curtis initially comes across as a deeply and inherently romantic artist, reciting from memory poems by Wordsworth, and an incredibly sensitive human being, whose time as a civil servant in an employment office for the mentally disabled is shown taking a psychological toll on him. Additionally, Curtis suffered from epilepsy and seizures, and while the film early on shows him purloining and ingesting larazipan taken from the medicine cabinet of a high school friend's grandmother, a later scene with a doctor who explains Curtis' condition and prescribes him numerous medications, suggests that the doctor's trial-and-error willy-nilly approach to treating Curtis may have been as much a factor in Curtis' death as any rock star proclivity for recreational drinking or drugs. Not to mention the awful side effects of the medications.
By midway through the film, Curtis appears to have lost control of his life, hence the film’s title; as his celebrity status blossoms, his personal life and health crumble. Curtis’ early marriage looms throughout the film with frame after frame featuring his left hand and the gold band that adorned his ring finger. As the band’s fame grew, he spent more time on the ride away from Deborah, and he ultimately fell out of love with her and into love with a Belgian woman named Annik Honore, who first met Curtis by requesting an interview with the band after a performance one night. As it turned out, she wasn’t an actual journalist, but more of a refined groupie. In the end, his passion governed his reason just as his medical condition ruled his body and his fans dictated how he spent most of his time, writing, rehearsing, and touring. Unwilling to cut ties with Annik, divorce Deborah, take his medications properly, and drink less, Curtis turned to suicide, it seems, as the only way for him to exert control over his own world.
In November 2007 The Killer's released their album Sawdust, and one of the songs on it, entitled "Shadowplay," is actually a cover of Joy Division. I just made this discovery after sampling some more of Joy Division's hits. I know, I'm a little slow, what can I say.
For fun, check out the Youtube clip below of Joy Division performing "Shadowplay" in 1978.
Then, give a second listen to the The Killer's cover of "Shadowplay." Their video actually alludes directly to the original and incorporates clips from the film so you can see Sam Riley as Ian Curtis and compare to the above clip of the artist himself singing.
By definition, a shadowplay is a play in which the actors appear as shadows cast upon a screen placed between the stage and the auditorium. Yet it seems as if Curtis put all of himself into his writing and performing, so much of himself that the experience, perhaps, left him a shadow of a man, but in the moment, there seemed to be no illusive barriers between him and his craft. While it is never addressed in the film, Curtis also seems to suffer from depression. Whether his melancholia, which was undeniably tangled up in his sense of himself as an artist, his epilepsy, his guilt over his adultery and his absence in his daughter's life, was a cause or effect in his life would be difficult to determine. Nonetheless, when reading the May10th, New York Times Magazine cover story, "A Long Journey in the Dark: My Life with Chronic Depression" by Daphne Merkin, I found a common thread between her and Curtis. During her most recent stay at a mental hospital, Merkin found herself puzzled by those who functioned "normally" in the world: she asks, "How had they figured out a way to live without getting bogged down in the shadows? From what source did they draw all their energy?". The most significant difference between Merkin and Curtis, of course, is that she continues to battle and write about the shadows that weigh her down, while Curtis was subsumed by them. In his sonnets, Shakespeare claims immortality is achieved via offspring, art, and love. Curtis has at least been assured this type of extended life, which is far better than oblivion any day.
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