MASS

Jason Isaacs     Martha Plimpton     Ann Dowd     Reed Birney 

            There are countless ways of dealing with grief, and Mass brilliantly gives us a window into a particular kind of grief dealt with by four people.  The film is set up so that it’s not clear exactly why two couples are meeting at a church none of them belongs to.  We only see a therapist-like woman visiting to make sure the room is OK, and the reverend’s wife trying to make sure everything is just right.  

            This part of the film is a bit tedious—the church woman is overly anxious, and the volunteer teenager has to hold his patience with her in check.  We also see one couple—Gail (Plimpton) and Jay (Isaacs)—arriving in their car, she being extremely ambivalent about proceeding.  Her husband is understanding, giving her an out if she wants it, but she finally relents. 

            They proceed to the church, and pretty soon another couple—Linda (Dowd) and Richard (Birney)—enters, and after awkward interchanges, they finally sit down together at a table.  Still, the filmmakers keep us in suspense as to exactly what has brought them together, although there are hints that they are there to work through something having to do with death.

            I think the filmmakers made a wise choice in keeping viewers wondering for such a long time, part of which is probably good filmmaking, but partly I think it’s to prepare us for a wrenching session.  What follows are graphic statements and coping defenses that give us an idea of each person’s personality.  One is all logic and reasoning, wishing to bring to light some “answer.”  Another is so pained she can hardly say anything, but both of them let slip many accusatory comments, dismissing whatever the other two might say.  

            The other couple seem mismatched, and it’s later implied that they are divorced—or at least don’t live together anymore, not uncommon after a tragedy.  She comes across a bit like a therapist, insightful, nondefensive, sympathetic, and more comfortable than any of them expressing her emotions.  He comes across as someone with more education than the others, but also less defensive toward the other couple.  He tries as best he can to explain his/their position.

            The four award-winning actors are superb in revealing all these aspects of their characters to the audience.  They merge with their characters so well, one can easily forget they’re acting.  

            Writer-director Fran Kranz is spot-on in depicting parents in their situation.  Accusations, guilt, stuttering while expressing one’s feelings, and a ton of ambivalence captures such a scene.  I admire Kranz’s choosing to depict this interchange, but perhaps it also shows insight gained from personal experience.

            The actors could not be better cast, and they play their roles with skill and honesty.

 

This is not a film to enjoy, but one to value for the heroic roles some parents are forced to play.

 

Grade:  B+                            By Donna R. Copeland

HEREDITARY

Toni Collette     Alex Wolff     Gabriel Byrne     Millie Shapiro     Ann Dowd

     The set-up for Hereditary is truly chilling—not too much to be unbelievable and just enough to make it plausible. The Graham family—father Steve (Byrne), mother Millie (Collette), son Peter (Wolff), and daughter Charlie (Shapiro) appear normal enough.  They live in a picturesque setting in a large old house in what looks to be a small town.  There are hints that strange things are going on in the scattering of dollhouses around the house (that will only become creepier later).  But also noticeable is something in Charlie’s eyes and behavior. For instance, she doesn’t say much, sometimes makes a clicking noise with her tongue, is seen drawing portraits of those around her incessantly, and once, we see her do something destructive to an animal as she casually eats a candy bar.     

     Millie’s mother has just died, and Millie wonders why she doesn’t feel like crying, but after she sneaks away to a grief-counseling group and her history tumbles out, we can see why.  Sadly, she feels a bit ashamed about attending, and keeps it from her family. Millie is an artist who is trying to meet a deadline for a project that involves figures she must paint so intricately, she needs glasses like jewelers and watch repairmen wear—just another touch to add to the eeriness of the story.  

     One evening, Peter asks to use the car to go to a party, although he presents it as a school function.  His mother gives him permission, making sure there will be no alcohol, and insisting he take his younger sister Charlie along.  This is one of the first set-ups typical of horror filmmakers—something that doesn’t make sense, but is needed for the plot later on.  That is, why would a mother force a teenager to take a 7 year-old to a social function when neither of them wants it? At any rate, they are compliant children, and they go along.

     This is where the movie takes a weird turn.  A tragedy occurs in which Charlie is killed, and the mother is not the same ever since.  This in itself is not unusual (no one is the same after losing a child), but in a horror story like this, the occult is introduced more overtly, where there were only hints before.  

     Millie’s chance (or not so much coincidental, as shown later) encounter with a member of the support group who hails her down at the shopping center, asks how she is doing, lets Millie know that she too has lost a son and grandchild, and gives Millie her address and phone number “if you need someone to talk to, because we all do.”  Millie makes light of this, once again, significantly, not telling her husband about Joan (Dowd) or the subsequent séance that she will experience in which Joan is able to conjure up her grandchild.

     After this, the film goes over the top in typical horror-film paths, introducing ever more fantastic events that have the audience gasping (or laughing, depending on individual perceptions).  Some of these scenes are effective (such as when Millie and Peter start to work on their issues—painful as they are.  But then, the turn is to more conventional horror motifs that have little to do with reality, i.e., Paimon, a king of hell, makes his appearance.

     This is a more than admirable first feature by writer-director Ari Aster, and one of which he can be truly proud.  His script and direction, the superb acting—particularly that of Collette—and the cinematography, music, and the rest of the crew make this a noteworthy film.  The music (Colin Stetson) and camera (Pawel Pogorzelski) are visible enough to be characters in being so present in telling the story even when no actors are present.  

Horror films come and go, but you should take notice of this one.

Grade:  B                                    By Donna R. Copeland

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC

Viggo Mortensen   George McKay   Samantha Isler   Annalise Basso   Nicholas Hamilton   Shree Crooks   Charlie Shotwell  

Kathryn Hahn   Steve Zahn   Frank Langella   Ann Dowd

            Get on board the bus.  This will probably be one of the more unusual rides you’ll make this year in the movies—along with Hunt for the Wilderpeople.  It’s basically about a father who wants to make everything right (perfect, perhaps) for his wife and children, so he takes them to live in the wilds of Washington State and carefully instructs them in survival skills such as:  Securing, growing, and preserving food; administering first aid; maintaining physical fitness; self-defense; education (and boy! do they learn philosophy, government, and politics!); and music.  I’m sure I left something out, but you get the point.  These are kids who would put the regular American student to shame.

            Everything is going well (although we don’t know the back-story until later), and then a tragedy occurs, which makes their world topsy-turvy.  In order to talk about the rest of the movie, I have to spoil what it is—the mother dies.  But she doesn’t die at home—that wouldn’t present any practical problems beyond heart-wrenching grief—she dies at a hospital near the home of her parents who are decidedly Christian and have no sympathy for the lifestyle she (who has become a Buddhist) and her husband have chosen.

            What follows is a resounding clash of cultures, which is used to comment about society today, at least in the U.S. and maybe in much of the western world.  The immediate dilemma for Ben is that the children desperately want to go to the funeral, which Leslie’s father has forbidden.  It’s also a dilemma because he has Leslie’s will which specifically states what is to happen after her death.

            For all Ben’s (Mortensen) sage planning and execution of the “ideal world”, he underestimates how much different the world he has created is from the real world.  We see the incredible training and education he and his wife have provided for their children, but perhaps it’s because of the absence of the feminine influence when his wife Leslie (Trin Miller) goes to the hospital for an extended stay, Ben begins taking more risks than he should, e.g., climbing steep mountains during a thunderstorm, and over-applying his socialist philosophy by teaching the kids how to rob a store.

            All of this comes to bear in the last part of the film, which entails a complex and near-disastrous resolution, but an excellent one, nevertheless.

            Having been a fan of TV’s “Silicon Valley”, I was shocked to see that one of the actors in that show wrote and directed this film, Matt Ross.  It’s especially humorous because the character he plays on TV is shallow, without many social/moral values.  Clearly, Ross does have social/moral values, and wants to caution us about our current society.  Do our children know what the Bill of Rights is?  Could our children survive in the wild?  Do we really have an appreciation and respect for nature?  This is basically what Captain Fantastic is about.

            I understand that when signing on to this project, Mortensen wanted to assure that the tone and message of the film was quality based, and there would be no "bad guys."  After his discussions with Ross, they made sure, for instance, that the child actors could actually slaughter a sheep for food and play musical instruments.  Mortensen himself maintains a garden at home.

            Important to acknowledge is the contribution of Alex Somers to the music of the film, which elevates and perfectly captures every scene. 

There are so many reasons to see Captain Fantastic.

Grade:  A                                    By Donna R. Copeland

OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

Sandra Bullock     Billy Bob Thornton     Anthony Mackie     Ann Dowd     

Scoot McNairy     Zoe Kazan     Joaquim de Almeida

          Crisis is the key word here in this picture showing the seamier (realistic?) side of politics.  The setting is Bolivia where a race for president is going on, the screenplay (Peter Straughan) of which is inspired by a documentary (same title) directed by the talented Rachel Boynton (Big Men http://texasartfilm.com/bigmen.html) about a political race for president of Bolivia in 2002.  Candidate Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado hired an American political firm that consulted all over the world to run his campaign:  Greenberg Carville Shrum.  (That’s Carville, as in James Carville.)  Since I haven’t seen the documentary, I don’t know how much the movie reflects events in that work.

          Our Brand is Crisis the movie begins with two political strategists, Nell (Dowd) and Ben (Mackie) driving through the snow to Jane Bodine’s (Bullock) isolated cabin to talk her into joining their team in Bolivia.  Hurt by political machinations in her work as a crack strategist in the past, she has developed new interests and a new life.  Somehow, though, the thrill of a campaign is seductive, and she decides to join them. 

        Unfortunately, after arriving in Bolivia with altitude sickness and feeling rotten in general, she realizes that her prior nemesis Pat Candy (Thornton) is on the scene.  Bad news.  The movie takes a neutral stance about their past, so it is unclear who actually was responsible for the most heinous dirty tricks in previous campaigns, although, I think they want us to believe that it was Candy, who comes across as slimy as the snake in the Garden of Eden. 

        The campaign proceeds and the two teams end up going for the jugular.  It is a fascinating (at least to me) look at how political campaign strategists think and reason.  In Jane’s case, she deftly sizes up the psychology of her candidate Castillo (de Almeida) and figures out how to turn his weaknesses into strengths—clearly going against the advice he is currently receiving from his own consultant and the American team.  In view of this perceptive cogency, the filmmakers’ showing her clumsy and neurotic for comic effect was silly and an unnecessary distraction.  They should have dispensed with the “comedy” altogether and gone for dramatic effect and political illumination.

          Although we learn how the election turns out, the film ends with an ambiguity that I see as a strength.  Beneath Jane’s many “masks” (alternately crazy, tender, calculating, insightful, and—above all—perceptive), she is a thoughtful and sincere woman with convictions who will continually surprise.

       We know Sandra Bullock is a phenomenal actor, and I think she portrayed this character to a T.  Such a talent actor can make the character come alive so forcefully you forget the actor.  She was strongest in this film when Candy is speaking to her in a taunting, seductive, goading manner and she simply stares into space (and you know exactly what she is thinking) or—in contrast—when she forcefully confronts her team or the candidate with hard truths; or at the end when she is mulling over in her mind the comments of the young campaign worker and all that has just transpired.  Billy Bob Thornton is masterful in portraying a truly evil person, all while talking in the most civil and seductive manner.  His idea of coming into the filming looking exactly like James Carville was a brilliant move.

          David Gordon Green does the quiet, personally revolutionary films that I am inevitably drawn to (e.g., Prince Avalanche, George Washington).  I imagine he smiles as he thinks about the issues he has brought up in Our Brand is Crisis that will spark controversy and differences of opinion.  In discussions about this film, I expect many will have strong opinions about political consultants, political processes (particularly elections), and the marketing of candidates.

An insightful look at the underside of political campaigns.

Grade:  B                        By Donna R. Copeland