Monday, September 04, 2006
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Should you see it? Yes, yes, yes! It is the Napoleon Dynamite of 2006 – a strange and quirky comedy that has you laughing from start to finish and with a climatic dance routine to rival Napoleon’s.
You know what, despite all the talk about Little Miss Sunshine being a comedy about dysfunctional families, it is not. Or if it is, it is indirectly so because Little Miss Sunshine is about exposing and ridiculing child beauty pageants and the families who enter there little girls in these sick, sick events. The directors needed to create a dysfunctional family to act as a yard stick with which to measure the depravity of the kiddy beauty contest.
What do I mean? O.K.: the directors show us this severely dysfunctional (and hilarious!) family for the first ¾ of the film. They are saying look, the grandfather is a heroine addict and offers his grandson inappropriate advise, such encouraging sex with lots of women, the father is a bankrupt business failure who offers his children cold advise from his motivational program instead of love, the mother is unsupportive, the son has not spoken for months and hates his family, the uncle is a depressed suicide survivor. Their car is falling apart, the parents’ marriage is falling apart, and they steal their own grandfather’s body from the hospital for god’s sake!
Can you imagine any worse family?!
We get our answer in the last ¼ of the film when we see the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Yes! These families who enter their little girls in this grotesque contest are far worse than Olive’s family. Dressing your 10 year old like a mini-tart and flaunting their pre-menstrual sexuality is far more depraved than heroine taking grandfathers and body snatching fathers.
Yes, but what about Olive’s final dance scene where she is stripping, a routine her grandfather taught her for god’s sake?
Yes, an even clearer example of my point. Even as Olive’s dance is an outright stripper routine she performs it with sincerity and innocence. Olive has no idea this is a ‘sexy’ dance, it is simply the dance her grandfather taught her, a grandfather who loved her as deeply and she loved him. By contrast the other girls are far more overt and conscious of their sexuality in the way they move, smile and shake it. And it is quite horrifying, while Olive remains sweet and loveable. And everyone freaks-out because Olive is (unknowingly) making overt what everyone else wants to deny – the contest’s sexuality.
Yes but what about Olive’s family, they brought her to this event and had to fight to get her in the show in the first place?
Another point in my favor. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They were expecting something along the lines of a school play but instead got Little Miss Glittery Tart. And when it is clear that she is no where near ready to perform at the level of sophistication required they first try and protect Olive by talking her out of going on, and then when her dance is ironically deemed inappropriate they further protect Olive by dancing along with her rather than taking her off stage. It is a surprising moment of tenderness and catharsis for the family. By contrast the other families brought their girls to the contest with their eyes wide open, with their make-up out and their sexuality on display. In other words they consciously and willingly brought their children to this horror show.
And by the end of the film you know Olive is lucky to have the family she does. The final image captures this idea. Olive is in the broken down van but she is being pushed by the rest of the family and as the car starts they jump in to join her and return home. A home with people that will truly sacrifice to get Olive to her dream and protect her with all they have when it doesn’t work out.
How many of us are lucky enough to be surrounded by that kind of dysfunction?
Should you see it? Yes, yes, yes! It is the Napoleon Dynamite of 2006 – a strange and quirky comedy that has you laughing from start to finish and with a climatic dance routine to rival Napoleon’s.
You know what, despite all the talk about Little Miss Sunshine being a comedy about dysfunctional families, it is not. Or if it is, it is indirectly so because Little Miss Sunshine is about exposing and ridiculing child beauty pageants and the families who enter there little girls in these sick, sick events. The directors needed to create a dysfunctional family to act as a yard stick with which to measure the depravity of the kiddy beauty contest.
What do I mean? O.K.: the directors show us this severely dysfunctional (and hilarious!) family for the first ¾ of the film. They are saying look, the grandfather is a heroine addict and offers his grandson inappropriate advise, such encouraging sex with lots of women, the father is a bankrupt business failure who offers his children cold advise from his motivational program instead of love, the mother is unsupportive, the son has not spoken for months and hates his family, the uncle is a depressed suicide survivor. Their car is falling apart, the parents’ marriage is falling apart, and they steal their own grandfather’s body from the hospital for god’s sake!
Can you imagine any worse family?!
We get our answer in the last ¼ of the film when we see the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Yes! These families who enter their little girls in this grotesque contest are far worse than Olive’s family. Dressing your 10 year old like a mini-tart and flaunting their pre-menstrual sexuality is far more depraved than heroine taking grandfathers and body snatching fathers.
Yes, but what about Olive’s final dance scene where she is stripping, a routine her grandfather taught her for god’s sake?
Yes, an even clearer example of my point. Even as Olive’s dance is an outright stripper routine she performs it with sincerity and innocence. Olive has no idea this is a ‘sexy’ dance, it is simply the dance her grandfather taught her, a grandfather who loved her as deeply and she loved him. By contrast the other girls are far more overt and conscious of their sexuality in the way they move, smile and shake it. And it is quite horrifying, while Olive remains sweet and loveable. And everyone freaks-out because Olive is (unknowingly) making overt what everyone else wants to deny – the contest’s sexuality.
Yes but what about Olive’s family, they brought her to this event and had to fight to get her in the show in the first place?
Another point in my favor. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They were expecting something along the lines of a school play but instead got Little Miss Glittery Tart. And when it is clear that she is no where near ready to perform at the level of sophistication required they first try and protect Olive by talking her out of going on, and then when her dance is ironically deemed inappropriate they further protect Olive by dancing along with her rather than taking her off stage. It is a surprising moment of tenderness and catharsis for the family. By contrast the other families brought their girls to the contest with their eyes wide open, with their make-up out and their sexuality on display. In other words they consciously and willingly brought their children to this horror show.
And by the end of the film you know Olive is lucky to have the family she does. The final image captures this idea. Olive is in the broken down van but she is being pushed by the rest of the family and as the car starts they jump in to join her and return home. A home with people that will truly sacrifice to get Olive to her dream and protect her with all they have when it doesn’t work out.
How many of us are lucky enough to be surrounded by that kind of dysfunction?
Friday, September 01, 2006
Silent Movie Mondays August 2006
The Paramount’s Silent Movie Mondays are perhaps my most favorite Seattle movie experience. (The other choices are SIFF or the art museum’s movie series.) This summer Denis James has come up with the Adventure Series, and Trader Joe's has come up with the goodies.
Don Juan (1926)
Director: Alan Crosland
Don Juan was unique to my experience of silent films since it is primarily a character study. John Barrymore, with his superb acting skills on display, plays Don Juan as a bored and brazen upper class Spaniard living in a palatial home in an Italian town. Although it seems the director would be happy making a standard plot driven story filled touches of racy sexuality and exciting swashbuckling, Barrymore high-jacks the film and turns it into something far more significant in the history film. Barrymore’s portrayal of Don Juan is the prototype for all the angst ridden, reckless and mostly young characters throughout film history. Don Juan brazenly flouts sexual morality and rules of fidelity by having affairs with every woman in town, both married or unmarried, for his own amusement. He makes only half-hearted attempts to hide his numerous affairs from the women’s husbands and from his other women. In fact in the opening scenes three women and a husband all stumble across each other in his Don Juan’s home and he must charm himself out this delicate entanglement.
Barrymore chooses to play Don Juan as too bored and lackadaisical to worry about the consequences of his sexual dalliances. In this way he is reminiscent of Bill Murray’s Don in Broken Flowers. In the opening sequence Don Juan can hardly get off the couch to confront irate lovers and violent husbands, just as Don can hardly get off his couch to break up with his girlfriend at the opening of Broken Flowers. Don Juan has a reckless disregard for his own well being. He is lost in meaninglessness even as his world is overflowing with luxury and comfort. In fact Don Juan courts suffering and even death as he defies the town’s violent ruling family by rejecting the sister’s sexual advances and loving the girl the evil cousin wants for himself. Don is less brave than disillusioned, depressed and reckless. In this strange way this silent film of a Renaissance story has the germ of the modern angst ridden reckless teenager. The core of Barrymore’s Don Juan is the same core as such later characters as James Dean’s Jim and other characters who act recklessly because their world bores them, is unfulfilling or hopelessly alienates them.
My question is are there any of these reckless, alienated characters between Don Juan and Rebel Without a Cause?
Prisoner of Zenda (1922)
Director: Rex Ingram
I have seen enough silent movies now on the big screen (somewhere between 20 and 30) to realize this film has one technical but major flaw. There were too many title cards. This overabundance of words continually brought the action and drama to a screeching halt and critically deprived it of momentum. And if there is anything a film about evil brothers, identical cousins, and a fight for the thrown needs it is momentum.
It is only once you see a film ruin by title cards that you realize title cards are a significant part of silent film art hidden in plain view. (With this experience in mind two weeks later I realized The Iron Mask has fantastic title cards: funny, few and out of the way.)
Sparrows (1926)
Director: William Beaudine
(Except when you are thinking of the great silent film comics), this is what you think of as a silent film: unembarrassed, unapologetic, overflowing melodrama. Mary Pickford plays a teenager, the oldest child and therefore caretaker of the other children by default, on a ‘child farm’ run by a selfish, ugly and evil family. The children are forced to do hard farm labor, sleep in a cold barn, eat almost no food and care for the sick baby without any needed medicine. Why not run away? Well there is the vicious attack dog, the quick sand bog surrounding the farm and, of course, the alligators. Regardless, they try to escape after hearing the evil family is going to kill the kidnapped child and throw her in the bog because the police are after them. An exciting escape through the swamp is the grand finale. What adventure!
I must mention one absurd yet highly effective, even beautiful scene that represents the death of the sick little baby. You see this pastoral biblical scene with Jesus surrounded by lambs in a beautiful field. It is an image of Jesus you probably saw as a child in a kid’s book. Well, Jesus steps from the meadow into the barn, cradles the baby in Molly’s (Mary Pickford’s) arms and walks back from the barn into the meadow. That is all, there is cut to day time, and we neither see nor hear from or about the baby again. It is a surprisingly stirring and effective death scene, even for the non-religious.
The Iron Mask (1929)
Director: Allan Dwan
This is an extremely well made silent film. When I was watching the grandeur of the opening scenes of The Iron Mask, showing the birth of the King’s son, my mind flashed ahead one year to the beginning of the talkies. The early talkies I have seen stand in stark contrast. They are far less grand, less spectacular – more gritty and cheap around the edges. It is the difference between 1950s Technicolor films and early television. Which is strange, given it is the same studios making these productions. Was it the depression that so starkly contrasts the early 1930s talkies with the late 1920s silents?
Most impressive is The Iron Mask’s opening scenes when the French king’s heir is born and the there seem to be 1000s of extras populating the French kingdom, which we know is a massive set in Hollywood. In fact these opening scenes are more impressive to me than the current day equivalent - computer generated special effects. These are 1929 brick and mortar and flesh and blood ‘special effects’. Douglas Fairbank’s studio was able to create a kingdom and round up 1000s of bodies to fill its streets and squares. It is a lavishness that ended with this film. 1929 was the first year more sound films were made then silents. For the next few years all the creative energy went into trying to hide the microphone in a plant and get the actors close enough to that plant to pick up their voices. Even as sounds technical details were worked out we never really returned to the overwhelming grandeur of productions, in particular the massive sets and hordes of people, that populated such as films as Griffith’s 1916 Intolerance through Fairbanks 1929 The Iron Mask. It is a bit sad, after seeing the silents at the top of their game in The Iron Mask, to know this is the end.
And speaking of the end, the final scene is The Iron Mask is a stirring good-by to Douglas Fairbanks as silent film star and to silent films in general. In the final minutes of the film, the evil twin is captured and will be hanged, the king is restored and the kingdom is saved. But Fairbanks is mortally wounded outside the castle while the other Musketeers have all died in the battle. The three dead Musketeers hang in the air and cheer on D'Artagnan to die and join them. He does die and they help him into heaven and rush off as happy as can be for “even greater adventures” in the sky. It works perfectly for the ending of the film, the ending of Fairbank’s career (the greatest male star) and the ending of silent films. It been a great run, we have dazzling, we have been killed at the top of our game, yet we will live on in an after life. And the Paramount movie series is part of that after life where 77 years later the film is still playing to a cheering house in a silent movie palace with live music from Dennis James on the original Mighty Wurlitzer. HO-LA!
Don Juan (1926)
Director: Alan Crosland
Don Juan was unique to my experience of silent films since it is primarily a character study. John Barrymore, with his superb acting skills on display, plays Don Juan as a bored and brazen upper class Spaniard living in a palatial home in an Italian town. Although it seems the director would be happy making a standard plot driven story filled touches of racy sexuality and exciting swashbuckling, Barrymore high-jacks the film and turns it into something far more significant in the history film. Barrymore’s portrayal of Don Juan is the prototype for all the angst ridden, reckless and mostly young characters throughout film history. Don Juan brazenly flouts sexual morality and rules of fidelity by having affairs with every woman in town, both married or unmarried, for his own amusement. He makes only half-hearted attempts to hide his numerous affairs from the women’s husbands and from his other women. In fact in the opening scenes three women and a husband all stumble across each other in his Don Juan’s home and he must charm himself out this delicate entanglement.
Barrymore chooses to play Don Juan as too bored and lackadaisical to worry about the consequences of his sexual dalliances. In this way he is reminiscent of Bill Murray’s Don in Broken Flowers. In the opening sequence Don Juan can hardly get off the couch to confront irate lovers and violent husbands, just as Don can hardly get off his couch to break up with his girlfriend at the opening of Broken Flowers. Don Juan has a reckless disregard for his own well being. He is lost in meaninglessness even as his world is overflowing with luxury and comfort. In fact Don Juan courts suffering and even death as he defies the town’s violent ruling family by rejecting the sister’s sexual advances and loving the girl the evil cousin wants for himself. Don is less brave than disillusioned, depressed and reckless. In this strange way this silent film of a Renaissance story has the germ of the modern angst ridden reckless teenager. The core of Barrymore’s Don Juan is the same core as such later characters as James Dean’s Jim and other characters who act recklessly because their world bores them, is unfulfilling or hopelessly alienates them.
My question is are there any of these reckless, alienated characters between Don Juan and Rebel Without a Cause?
Prisoner of Zenda (1922)
Director: Rex Ingram
I have seen enough silent movies now on the big screen (somewhere between 20 and 30) to realize this film has one technical but major flaw. There were too many title cards. This overabundance of words continually brought the action and drama to a screeching halt and critically deprived it of momentum. And if there is anything a film about evil brothers, identical cousins, and a fight for the thrown needs it is momentum.
It is only once you see a film ruin by title cards that you realize title cards are a significant part of silent film art hidden in plain view. (With this experience in mind two weeks later I realized The Iron Mask has fantastic title cards: funny, few and out of the way.)
Sparrows (1926)
Director: William Beaudine
(Except when you are thinking of the great silent film comics), this is what you think of as a silent film: unembarrassed, unapologetic, overflowing melodrama. Mary Pickford plays a teenager, the oldest child and therefore caretaker of the other children by default, on a ‘child farm’ run by a selfish, ugly and evil family. The children are forced to do hard farm labor, sleep in a cold barn, eat almost no food and care for the sick baby without any needed medicine. Why not run away? Well there is the vicious attack dog, the quick sand bog surrounding the farm and, of course, the alligators. Regardless, they try to escape after hearing the evil family is going to kill the kidnapped child and throw her in the bog because the police are after them. An exciting escape through the swamp is the grand finale. What adventure!
I must mention one absurd yet highly effective, even beautiful scene that represents the death of the sick little baby. You see this pastoral biblical scene with Jesus surrounded by lambs in a beautiful field. It is an image of Jesus you probably saw as a child in a kid’s book. Well, Jesus steps from the meadow into the barn, cradles the baby in Molly’s (Mary Pickford’s) arms and walks back from the barn into the meadow. That is all, there is cut to day time, and we neither see nor hear from or about the baby again. It is a surprisingly stirring and effective death scene, even for the non-religious.
The Iron Mask (1929)
Director: Allan Dwan
This is an extremely well made silent film. When I was watching the grandeur of the opening scenes of The Iron Mask, showing the birth of the King’s son, my mind flashed ahead one year to the beginning of the talkies. The early talkies I have seen stand in stark contrast. They are far less grand, less spectacular – more gritty and cheap around the edges. It is the difference between 1950s Technicolor films and early television. Which is strange, given it is the same studios making these productions. Was it the depression that so starkly contrasts the early 1930s talkies with the late 1920s silents?
Most impressive is The Iron Mask’s opening scenes when the French king’s heir is born and the there seem to be 1000s of extras populating the French kingdom, which we know is a massive set in Hollywood. In fact these opening scenes are more impressive to me than the current day equivalent - computer generated special effects. These are 1929 brick and mortar and flesh and blood ‘special effects’. Douglas Fairbank’s studio was able to create a kingdom and round up 1000s of bodies to fill its streets and squares. It is a lavishness that ended with this film. 1929 was the first year more sound films were made then silents. For the next few years all the creative energy went into trying to hide the microphone in a plant and get the actors close enough to that plant to pick up their voices. Even as sounds technical details were worked out we never really returned to the overwhelming grandeur of productions, in particular the massive sets and hordes of people, that populated such as films as Griffith’s 1916 Intolerance through Fairbanks 1929 The Iron Mask. It is a bit sad, after seeing the silents at the top of their game in The Iron Mask, to know this is the end.
And speaking of the end, the final scene is The Iron Mask is a stirring good-by to Douglas Fairbanks as silent film star and to silent films in general. In the final minutes of the film, the evil twin is captured and will be hanged, the king is restored and the kingdom is saved. But Fairbanks is mortally wounded outside the castle while the other Musketeers have all died in the battle. The three dead Musketeers hang in the air and cheer on D'Artagnan to die and join them. He does die and they help him into heaven and rush off as happy as can be for “even greater adventures” in the sky. It works perfectly for the ending of the film, the ending of Fairbank’s career (the greatest male star) and the ending of silent films. It been a great run, we have dazzling, we have been killed at the top of our game, yet we will live on in an after life. And the Paramount movie series is part of that after life where 77 years later the film is still playing to a cheering house in a silent movie palace with live music from Dennis James on the original Mighty Wurlitzer. HO-LA!
