Gary Dretzka
Noah Forrest
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Douglas Pratt
Ray Pride

All The
Pretty Artists...
Julian Schnabel,
Reinaldo, Jean-Michel
and Jean-Do

There are three kinds of people in the world: there are those that consider Julian Schnabel to be a genius, those who don’t and the rest don’t care much.  I happen to think that man is an unquestionable genius of the highest level, as both a wielder of a paintbrush and a camera. 

The first time I took notice of Schnabel was when I saw the brilliant Basquiat, the biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, underground graffiti artist turned art-world sensation, burning bright and fading away.  Walking out of the film, I was most astounded by the unbelievable performance by Jeffrey Wright, who embodies the title character so completely that it has forever altered my perception of both Wright and Basquiat, linking them forever in my mind.  Watching it several more times, I noticed it wasn’t just that Wright gives one of the best performances of the decade, but that the director was able to elicit such a performance. 

An actor is only as good as the director allows him to be and it is clear that Schnabel allowed Wright to indulge himself and the result is not hammy, but arch and beautiful desperate.  Then there’s David Bowie who does the best Andy Warhol that I’ve seen yet on film, one that allows us to understand the man behind the myth better in half an hour of screen time than Guy Pearce is able to do in over an hour in Factory Girl.  He makes us see Andy not as a cold, calculating kind of evil genius, but a pathetic and incredibly talented hanger-on.

It was also the world that Schnabel creates in Basquiat that made me sit up and take notice.  On a relatively low-budget, he made me understand what it was like to live in my hometown in the early 80’s, before Giuliani hid the homeless people and when starving artists were still able to afford the modest rents in SoHo.  Schnabel made sure to show both the beauty in the squalor and the ugliness in the affluence, showing me a New York City that I long for but don’t wish to live in.  It’s also apparent that Schnabel knows what looks good and each frame of the film could be a painting, with brilliant lighting and exceptional angles that are never imposing but always interesting.

Schnabel knew this world because he was a part of it.  He was a contemporary of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Gary Oldman’s character in the film is essentially playing a fictionalized version of Schnabel.  So, as much as I adored the film, I wondered if perhaps it was only as good as it was because Schnabel was so immersed in the material.  Then along came Before Night Falls.

As far as I know, Schnabel had no connection to the Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, the artist Before Night Falls is about, but it feels just as keyed into the man and his life as Basquiat, perhaps even more so.  Schnabel’s second film was a more daring one; using Johnny Depp in more than one role, lots of chocolaty lighting, a bunch of political rhetoric, more than a little gay sex, old documentary and newsreel footage, and a good deal of voiceover narration reading Arenas’ poems aloud.  It was as if Schnabel was so emboldened by the success of his first piece of filmic art that he really wanted to push the envelope further on the second.  As a result, the film is something of a small masterpiece.

Once again, Schnabel elicits a career-making performance out of Javier Bardem, who is such a tour-de-force in this film that it demands to be seen by anyone who has any interest in film or acting.  Despite his nomination for the film, Bardem never became a household name; but hopefully, now that No Country for Old Men is gaining steam and his performance as the icy killer Chigurh is getting awards attention, people will seek out this film and marvel at the subtle and gentle touch he brings to a passionately loving man, a man whose words could melt the heart of even someone like Chigurh.  Well, maybe not.

Before Night Falls showed that Schnabel was very much interested in exploring his central theme of: artists trying to express themselves in the face of obstacles.  In Basquiat, the main character tries to get his message across using graffiti and other types of street art, but is felled by his own self-destruction and the vampirism of the art world; in Before Night Falls, Reinaldo Arenas writes against the tide of a Communist regime and, eventually, AIDS.  His most recent film fits in perfectly with that theme.

Schnabel really elevated his craft with his second film and it was a shame that we had to wait seven long years for his next one.  I cannot tell you how eagerly I had anticipated The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Schnabel’s newest film about Jean-Dominique Bauby.  Bauby was the editor of Elle who suffered a stroke at the age of 43,  causing him to develop "locked-in syndrome,” paralyzing his entire body except for his left eye.  He is able to communicate by blinking at the corresponding letter when hearing the alphabet read aloud and uses this form of communication to write a memoir.

I was clearly excited for the film because I was a big Schnabel fan (and by now, I’m also just as impressed with his artwork) and because it starred Mathieu Amalric, a French actor that I adore for his work with filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin.  I think because of my anticipation, I was ultimately let-down.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is an absolutely beautiful film that I liked a hell of a lot, but while I so wanted to fall in love with it, I just couldn’t.  I could list a thousand things that I admired about the film, from the bravery and technical sophistication of the first-person POV that is used in the opening half an hour and the emotional connection it gives us to the characters, to Mathieu Amalric being able to convey more with one blink of his eye than many actors can do with whole monologues, to the gorgeous framing of every shot, to the beautiful scenes of Bauby with his father (played so hauntingly and touchingly by the great Max von Sydow).  However, I ultimately couldn’t fall in love with the film and while I think my high expectations are mostly to blame, I also feel like I walked out of the film not knowing Jean-Do as well as I now know Jean-Michel and Reinaldo. 

When the film begins, we meet Jean-Do (as Bauby’s friend’s called him) and he is already paralyzed.  While there are several scenes that flash back to Jean-Do before his stroke, we don’t really get a larger picture of what his life was like before and therefore makes it harder to understand exactly what he has lost when he loses his ability to move and communicate.  Sure, we can all imagine what that would entail and we understand how he feels about his situation with a great deal of voiceover, but we don’t see it, which is so surprising for a film directed by a visual artist. 

But that is really nitpicking, as the film does so many things right and the most important is that it never becomes overly-saccharine.  There are scenes of various people connected to Jean-Do crying their eyes out, but the voiceover makes sure to cut that sentimentality with ample levity.  It is a tribute to the film and Schnabel that Jean-Do is not a martyr simply because he can’t move; in fact, he does some truly cruel things, not least of which is allowing his loving ex-wife (played tenderly and beautifully by Emmanuelle Seigner) to be the interlocutor for a phone call he receives from his mistress.  It is a testament to Jean-Do that we don’t hate him for this moment and it’s a miraculous feat by Schnabel to paint the picture in such a way that it makes Bauby more human and real. 

I’ve never seen the ocean so beautiful, the way Schnabel shoots the ebb and flow of the tide kissing the shoreline while Bauby remains motionless, seemingly in awe with his left eye wide in amazement at the little miracles all around him.  Those miracles, however, still do not help when he wants to tousle his child’s hair or feel their weight on his lap. 

Special mention must be given to the acting in this film, not just by Amalric, Seigner, and Von Sydow, but by the other three women in Jean-Do’s life: Marie-Josee Croze and Olatz Lopez Garmendia (Schnabel’s real-life wife) as the speech therapists who try with both science and God to help Jean-Do speak and move and Anne Consigny as the stenographer who helps him write his book.  It definitely makes me smile to think of this paralyzed man surrounded by all these beautiful women, at one point making the magazine editor say to himself, “Am I in heaven?”  Because the truth is, to him, just to look at their gorgeous faces every day was almost enough.  Almost.

I suppose what was most shocking about this film for me is that it wasn’t shocking at all.  Schnabel is such a revolutionary as an artist (witness his pink-painted building in Greenwich Village) that this film seemed surprisingly conventional.  While he shows with this film that Schnabel can make a great movie that will appeal to everyone, I kind of wish he would return to his roots as the guy who enjoyed making waves.  After all, that is what we come to expect of our greatest artists.

Golden Globes Gone Wild

Award season has officially begun to warm up in the past week or so, with the release of various critics’ organization awards, top ten lists and now the Golden Globes (they gave a nod to Julian Schnabel).  While I have a few thoughts on some of the nominees and snubs, I just want to lament the possible loss of the actual awards show due to the writers strike.  The Golden Globes were always my favorite awards show to watch because it was usually the most casual, the most fun and the most lubricated.  After all, this was an awards show where alcohol was served and as a result, we got to see more off-the-cuff speeches and incidents like the one where Christine Lahti was in the bathroom when she should have been accepting her award.  Also, the fact that there is no host helps the show breeze by more quickly than the more rigid Academy Awards.  But, I’m in full support of the writers and my enjoyment of an awards show is small potatoes compared to what they are fighting for.

With that said, I must say that the only omission I’m upset about is Emile Hirsch’s lack of a nod for Into the Wild.  I have yet to see There Will Be Blood, but I can say without a doubt that Hirsch deserves a nomination more than Denzel Washington for American Gangster.  Denzel is not doing anything in that film that we haven’t seen him do countless times before, emoting and pounding his chest with fury; but what Hirsch does in Into the Wild is so remarkable and subtle that it almost makes sense that the HFPA wouldn’t recognize it.  I hope he can wear this snub as a badge of honor and I sincerely hope that the Academy Awards voters correct this mistake.

Other than that, though, I think the main point that can be gleaned from the Golden Globe nominations is that No Country for Old Men has to be the frontrunner.  I’m no prognosticator, but considering the HFPA’s history of nominating films and actors with more star power in the hopes that the biggest celebrities with show up to be feted, it must be sheer love that would cause a Coen Brothers film with no superstars in it to be nominated not only for Best Drama but Best Writer and Best Director as well.  It is one of only two films (Atonement, the sumptuous epic starring Keira Knightley being the other one) to have nominations in all three of those categories.  I think this solidifies No Country’s place as a legitimate contender for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Hooray Blu-Ray

There is a passionate debate about the merits of HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray and this week I finally caved in and bought a PS3.  While I’m not the world’s biggest gamer, I enjoy playing Madden and NBA Live as much as the next guy, so for the price it seemed a wise choice to buy a gaming system that also functions as a Blu-Ray player.  The real kicker for me was that I learned that both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players upconvert standard DVDs into high-def; while this isn’t the same as true high-def, it definitely would be an improvement over standard quality DVD.  I think Blu-Ray is probably the better buy, especially if it comes in the PS3, but the truth is just that it was the better buy for me.

I’ve been an HD fan ever since my brother showed me how much better NBA and MLB games look on his high-def television, being able to see the glare off the hardwood or the individual blades of grass on a baseball diamond, fluttering in the wind.  It’s been unfortunate, however, that there are only about thirty or so HD channels offered by Time-Warner and my progressive scan DVD player would never be able to output the 1080i that my television was capable of.  As a result, for a movie lover like me it was tough going trying to find HD film programming.  I would DVR as many good movies as possible on HDNet Movies or HBO-HD and marvel at how crisp the images looked.  But, I would constantly stare off at my massive pile of DVDs and wish that they would look as good.

Now, I’ve only had the PS3 for two days and while I’m impressed with the improvement, it’s not as considerable as I had hoped.  For one thing, I have to get a new HD television that will be able to stream 1080p.  The truth of the matter is, though, that because of the amazing ability to upconvert my regular DVDs, those standard DVDs look almost as crisp as the Blu-Ray disc of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  The Blu-Ray disc does have more lines of resolution and the picture quality is better, but not enough that I will be Blu-Ray discs exclusively from now.  Instead, I’ll probably just keep purchasing standard DVDs since the cost is considerably lower.

I think this technology will be obsolete in about five to ten years when computers are fast enough and the memory is large enough that we can stream and save HD films, but for now the PS3 is at the right price and so far I think it’s a good buy.

E-Mail of the Week

“What’s your top ten of the year?” – Andy

I wish I could answer this question, but the truth is that I have about twenty more films to see before the year is over, so I don’t think I’ll be able to answer that question adequately until around New Year’s.  I’ve seen 175 films so far this year, but I’m sure you can guess what might make an appearance.  I admire so many of the other critics who are already (!) releasing their top ten lists, which I could conceivably do, but I’m too anal-retentive to even consider releasing an unfinished list.  I will tell you that Zodiac will definitely be on there…

- Noah Forrest
December 17, 2007

Other columns by Noah Forrest
12.10.07 - Bad Movies
12.03.07 - No Country For Old Men
11.26.07 - Oscar Thoughts
11.19.07 - Thanksgiving
11.12.07 - Redacted
11.05.07 - Oscar, Don't Forget the Subtle Guys
10.30.07 - Ridley Scott - Overrated?
10.21.07 - Clooney Straddling The Line
10.08.07 - Wes Anderson
10.02.07 - Jake Paltrow's The Good Night
09.27.07 - Cleaning House
09.20.07 - Top 10 To Date
09.13.07 - Film Vs Television
08.31.07 - Halloween Review
08.28.07 - Who Is The Next Scorsese?
08.21.07 - Fall Preview
08.14.07 - The Horrific State Of The Horror Film
08.10.07 - Reservations About Catherine Zeta-Jones
08.07.07 - Saving Steven Spielberg
07.30.07 - Skinheads in the Cinema & This Is England
07.28.07 - Siena Miller: Good or Evil?
07.26.07 - The Frenzy on the Wall

Noah Forrest is a 24 year old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writers and do not neccessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

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