FILM REVIEW: BLUE VALENTINE

Cindy (Michelle Williams) in Blue Valentine.

Love, rage and blood beneath the surface

By John Esther

Once upon a time in Super 16mm, 25mm lense, handheld camera land, Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) were sort of happy. Compelled by his unwavering belief that Cindy was the one, Dean courted her in quite the charming manner, took a beating because of her (if he only had a cell phone), assumed co-responsibility in raising a child not his own and married her. For her part, Cindy gave up her current boyfriend, Bobby (Mike Vogel), and any potential or real ambition she had because of Dean. While they had their moments of despair they each made each other so happy. How could Dean and Cindy ever go on without each other?

Six years later, housepainter Dean and nurse Cindy dwell in a dinghy Scranton, Pennsylvania house miles away from the happy times of The Office. Shot on HD with two cameras at a time, Cindy's love for Dean has all but burned out, yet he still loves her madly and their daughter, Frankie (Faith Wladyka), too. In response to their demise, Dean tries a few things to save their marriage, which includes staying at a hotel for the night.

This hotel stay is but a mere reprieve. The relationship is pretty much doomed, but Dean never gives up. On the surface Dean deserves our sympathies for the most part, especially when you consider what transpired earlier in their relationship, yet by the time he appears at Cindy's work the suspicion that Dean has been given a few chances, out of the film's time and space, seems solidified.

Expanding and contracting in space while moving back and forth in time over the six years, Blue Valentine offers a refreshing and raw look at holy matrimony coming undone a la Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Revolutionary Road (2008) and this year's Rabbit Hole. Except Dean and Cindy are relatively poorer than those other clashing couples and co-writer and director Derek Cianfrance's film was made on a much tighter budget.

(In preparation for their roles, Gosling and Williams reportedly "lived" on housepainter and nurse budgets, respectively, for two weeks.)

Seven years in the making, Cianfrance (Brother Tied; Cagefighter) went through many trials and tribulations to get this film made. And if it were not for Williams and Rosling's dedication to their craft it probably would have never made. Not only did they support Cianfrance over many years – Williams was on board with the project since 2003, Gosling came on in 2005 -- they willingly accepted the physical changes required for the roles, including purposely gaining as much weight as they could in one month. Notably, Williams gained 15 pounds before they would shoot her nude scenes. Now how many actors would intentionally gain flesh before exposing her or his flesh?

Fortunately their hard work paid off. Blue Valentine oozes with so much honesty it might be hard for insecure couples to endure while garnering sympathy from those few couples out there who are lucky to stay happy for many years. Perhaps more amusingly, parents with adolescent or young adult children believing they have already found the love of their live may want to take to their idealistic offspring to see Blue Valentine -- especially if you do not care for the object of your child's affections.

For their dedications, Williams and Gosling give two of the better performances of the year and they are gaining nominations – although, I like her performance more. Dean's accent sounds more Bostonian than Brooklyn, where he lived when they met, or from Florida, where he claims to hail from during a job interview.

Beyond elocution of Gosling's character, the only other significant shortcoming is the pretty lame soundtrack to supplement the driving narrative. An underused and abused art form in film, Blue Valentine is no exception to the rule of sappy songs and mawkish melodies. However, Gosling/Dean's numbers are pretty amusing, including one very memorable scene where he plays the ukulele and Williams/Cindy does a tap dance.

(While shooting the film, Williams did not know Gosling was going to play the ukulele and Gosling did not know Williams was going to dance to his song until their cue: "Do you have any special talents?" Then they had to improvise the song and dance.)

Quality direction, excellent cinematography by Andrij Parekh (Half Nelson; Cold Souls) and featuring two very dedicated star actors, Blue Valentine offers an honest alternative to the fairy tale, love stories Hollywood offers throughout the year. A pyrotechnic display may go off at the end of a love story, but it is not at night, it is not romantic and it is not in anybody's head. That happens only in the movies (and in an episode of the Brady Bunch).

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FILM FEATURE: JOHN SAYLES AND AMIGO

John Sayles on the set of Amigo. Photo by Mary Cybulski.

Indie filmmaker rides again.

By Ed Rampell

Writer-director John Sayles went to Hollywood Saturday night, but that’s not to say the über-indie filmmaker -- creator of independent features such as Return of the Secaucus Seven, The Brother From Another Planet and Lone Star -- has “gone Hollywood.” Sayles held court at the historic Roosevelt Hotel then crossed the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame (where, not surprisingly, there’s no star for the maverick moviemaker) to present the U.S. premiere of his new film Amigo at what may be La-La-Land’s grandest movie palace, the ornate, capacious Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

A near epic entirely shot on location in the Philippines with a largely Filipino crew and a mixed cast of Filipino and American actors, Amigo tells the story of a village caught in the crossfire between Filipino nationalists and U.S. soldiers occupying those Western Pacific islands -- an outgrowth of 1898’s Spanish-American War. Instead of liberating the Philippines from colonialism, the latter day Yanqui conquistadors replaced Spain as the colonial ruler. Having already endured a third of a millennium of foreign occupation and rule, General Aguinaldo and his fellow revolutionaries did not take kindly to Washington’s meddling in their internal affairs, and Filipino guerrillas took up arms to resist the U.S. invaders.

The Philippine-American War was arguably the U.S. Empire’s longest war, lasting from 1899 all the way to 1913. (One could actually argue that although the Philippines attained formal independence in 1946, the U.S. occupation lasted until 1991, when the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Pinatubo with post-Ferdinand Marcos nationalism combined to drive the Yanquis out of their Subic Bay Naval Station and Clark Air bases.) Leave it to the leftwing Sayles -- whose company is called Anarchists’ Convention Films -- to shine a light on this little known armed conflict -- something that the helmer says he loves to do. And by turning to this violent episode of the past, Sayles also scores some salient points about Washington’s two ongoing, seemingly endless occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, which threaten to replace the Philippine-American imperial imbroglio as the U.S.’s longest lasting wars.

As Chris Cooper’s hard-bitten colonel says, “There’s a lot of history you don’t know about.”

Cooper, a veteran Sayles-man, leads the American troupe as Col. Hardacre, a hard ass Civil War vet and officer in charge of the U.S. troops, who clashes with Garrett Dillahunt’s Lt. Compton, as he attempts to win the hearts and minds of the villagers he oversees. In an effort at what would be called “hamlet pacification” during another Yankee war of aggression, Vietnam , Compton introduces display democracy to the village he occupies. But when Hardacre returns there after a skirmish he water boards the hamlet’s re-elected headman, Rafael Dacanay (Joel Torre).

Rafael walks a taut tightrope as the village chief who must placate foreign invaders garrisoned in his village of Nipa huts and somehow co-exist with the guerrillas holed up in the jungle, and with whom he somewhat sympathizes. Rafael also contends with divided family loyalties. It’s a tough balancing act, as both the indigenous and the invading forces reportedly committed atrocities during the war.

Sayles often directs low key, laconically paced, character driven indies, such as the 1983 coming out drama Lianna, made long before porn’s Sappho chic trend or Ellen DeGeneres came out on her sitcom or MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow replaced Ellen as America’s favorite lesbian. Lone Star, which paired Cooper and Elizabeth Pena, is a racially charged murder mystery, but also a sensitive drama about brother-sister incest. Amigo, however, is most similar to Sayles’ action-packed Matewan, which was inspired by an actual episode of explosive class war pitting militant miners against owners and their henchmen. Amigo has the most gunplay and revolutionary politics of any Sayles film since Matewan, which also co-starred Cooper.

Sayles shot Amigo on location at Bohol, a scenic island located in the Visayas archipelago. During the Q&A after the Nov. 6 premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Sayles spoke highly of the Filipino film industry and of the Philippines as a location, which often doubles for Vietnam as in Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

Most of Amigo’s crewmembers were Filipinos, including its cinematographer, Lee Briones-Meily, and production designer Rodell Cruz. An exception were soundmen Sayles imported because, he said, “sync sound” and Dolby technology, are not widely used in the Philippines. Sayles added that while the Filipino crew was paid on par with or slightly more than what they’d get for working on a local production, they worked shorter, more regular hours on Amigo.

Sayles’ longtime producer Maggie Renzi told the audience that U.S. distributors should pick up Amigo because there are so many Filipinos in the U.S. About one fifth of all people of Asian ancestry in the U.S. are Filipino. This is probably due to the colonial history of the Philippines and U.S. After people of Chinese origin, Filipinos are the second biggest Asian-American groups.

Prior to the screening, at the Roosevelt Hotel’s lobby Sayles enthusiastically expounded upon Amigo’s use of RED digital cameras to two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who previously worked as Sayles’ director of photography on Silver City and Matewan and attended the Hollywood premiere of Amigo.

At the Roosevelt the tall, graying Sayles also discussed the vicissitudes of the economics of filmmaking and publishing, considering the latter to be in an even worse state than the former. Amigo grew out of Sayles’ soon-to-be-published sprawling novel called A Moment in the Sun about the era at the end of the 19th century, which marked a key turning point for the United States. Having utterly routed the Mexicans in the Southwest and the American Natives from coast to coast, Washington looked overseas to fulfill its “Manifest Destiny,” as Westward Expansion inevitably led to the Pacific. As the U.S. land grab grabbed Hawaii, Guam, Philippines and beyond, America arguably went from being a republic to becoming an empire.

Sayles, who is an accomplished author of fiction, as well as a screenwriter, lamented that he’d finally found a publisher for A Moment in the Sun, but was only being paid “a $3,000 advance. I spent more than $5,000 on research,” he laughed. Meanwhile, as of Nov. 6, Amigo has not picked up a distribution deal anywhere in the world, except for the Philippines.

At 59-years-old, Sayles may no longer be Hollywood’s enfant terrible, but he remains terribly committed to making independent minded, thought provoking films (and books) his way and on his terms, outside of the Hollywood studio system. To paraphrase the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, there’s no gray hair in this cineaste’s soul.

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AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL 2010: S&M LAWN CARE

Mel (Mark Potts )and Sal (Cole Selix) in S&M Lawn Care.

Mowing down the competition

By Don Simpson

Sal (Cole Selix) and Mel (Mark Potts) run S&M Lawn Care. Mel mows lawns because lawn care is in his blood (his deceased father was once a great lawn care specialist). Sal mows lawns in order to save money to travel to the Amazon.

Everything is going as planned until one day someone starts stealing S&M’s hard-earned lawns in complete disregard of the Lawn Care Treaty of 1995. That certain someone, a sleazy jerk with long hair and goatee named Drake (William Brand Rackley), is armed with a slickly produced commercial and seductively clad female assistants. Sex sells and everyone around town is buying. Drake even donates his used lawn mowers to the “Darfurinians.” How can S&M possibly compete with that?

Drake’s company, Lawns By Drake, functions cleverly as a allegory for big budget Hollywood films (filmmakers who put style and sex over substance) while S&M Lawn Care represents the hard-working and big-hearted independent filmmakers of the world. Along those lines, S&M Lawn Care is a million times funnier than The Other Guys, Get Him to the Greek or Funny People, but it is extremely rare that an independent comedy is able to beat a Hollywood comedy in the box office. Heck it is nearly impossible for independent comedies to even have an opportunity to compete at the box office.

Besides playing the lead roles, Potts functions as director, co-writer, cinematographer and editor; Selix functions as co-writer. S&M Lawn Care is the third feature from Singletree Productions (The Stanton Family Grave Robbery and Simmons on Vinyl) which was formed in 2006 by Potts and Selix.

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