Serious Men: The Coens and Soderbergh against the world

Is it just me or did anybody else get The Informant! and A Serious Man a little mixed up? You vaguely knew that the Coen Brothers directed one and Steven Soderbergh directed the other, but you couldn’t quite keep them straight, right? (No? Maybe it was just me). For years now the Coen Brothers and Steven Soderbergh have been dividing up the work of making the smartest, most beautifully-crafted, halfway-serious, semi-indie films out there, but until this fall I’ve never really thought of them in the same breath, and that’s despite both of their close connections with George Clooney (who appears in neither of these films, even though he seems to be in every other film out right now). But then The Informant! and A Serious Man were released within two weeks of each other and it got me thinking.

Joel and Ethan Coen are, respectively, 8 and 5 years older than Soderbergh. All three of them have been making films since the mid ’80s. Though the Coen aesthetic is easier to pin down than the Soderbergh aesthethic (Soderbergh being far more restlessly adventurous and experimental) their filmographies have much in common. Both (if I can refer to the Coens as a single entity from now on) have made noiry thrillers (Blood Simple; The Underneath) and both have made comic thrillers (Fargo; the Ocean trilogy); both have made jail-break movies starring Clooney (O Brother Where Art Thou?; Out of Sight); both have made ravishing black and white fables (The Man Who Wasn’t There; Kafka); both have essayed left-of-field remakes (The Ladykillers; Solaris); both have contributed short films to portmanteau projects (the Coens to Paris, je t’aime and Chacun son cinema, Soderbergh to Eros). And both have won Oscars and Palmes d’Or.

Above all, both are incredibly fast-working and prolific. The Coens have made half their 14 features in this decade alone. But Soderbergh trumps that, making almost as many features (12, or even 13 if you count Che as two films) in the ’00s than the Coens have made in total, not to mention a TV series (K Street). But the Coens write all their own material, while Soderbergh, who started out as the archetypal writer-director with Sex, Lies and Videotape seems to rely more these days on other screenwriters. The Coens moonlight as their own editor under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes, while Soderbergh (who also moonlights occasionally as his own editor under the pseudonym Mary Ann Bernard) works as his own cinematographer under the pseudonym Peter Andrews (and is one of the best cinematographers in Hollywood at that).

Which brings us to The Informant! and A Serious Man: two very different films which could hardly be more alike. Two films about bespectacled Midwestern suburban putzes who wear their pants too high and feel that the world is against them. Both films had little fanfare before they started getting themselves noticed this summer (The Informant! with its Saul Bass-y poster, A Serious Man with its what-is-it trailer) then premiering within a day of each other at the Toronto Film Festival (though The Informant! had bowed four days earlier in Venice) and opening theatrically within three weeks of their premiere. (Though both directors have appeared in one of the previous two New York Film festivals, I would assume that the NYFF must have rejected both these new works). Though the films have widely differering budgets ($7 million for A Serious Man, $22 million for The Informant!) neither really looks particularly more expensive than the other, with the big difference in cost being the casting: Soderbergh has Matt Damon, while the biggest names in A Serious Man are Richard Kind and Fyvush Finkel (the film’s star Michael Stuhlbarg being better known on Broadway). Though A Serious Man is a film about Judaism (or is it about Jewishness?) and The Informant! is a film about Capitalism (or is it about greed?), the two films have a similar setting and a similar darkly humorous tone. Both films were shot on location (A Serious Man in Minneapolis MN and The Informant! in Decatur IL) and spend equal time in suburban living rooms, kitchens and driveways, offices, and motels. In both films FBI men arrive on doorsteps and bosses linger in office doorways making veiled threats.

Larry Gopnik in the Coen film is a Job-like figure who suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Stuhlbarg played Hamlet in Central Park last summer in preparation) while Damon’s Mark Whitacre is a man who, though even more paranoid than Gopnik, is more the agent of his own demise. Both ultimately are company men (and scientists no less) just trying to work their way up the ladder—Whitacre as a biochemist at a giant Midwestern corporation, Gopnik as a physics professor at a small Midwestern university.

One of the biggest differences between these serious men, beyond their religion, is their wives. One has the most supportive wife in living memory. The other, the least. If you’ve seen either you’ll know what I mean.

Due to the presence of Damon and the backing of Warner Brothers, The Informant opened with a $10 million weekend, has played on up to 2,505 screens and  has grossed $33 million to date. A Serious Man (distributed by Focus Features) had a $251,000 opening weekend, has played on up to 262 screens and has grossed $7.5 million. But A Serious Man is the better reviewed film (79 metacritic rating, 86% rotten tomato rating, against The Informant!’s 66 and 76%) and looks to play longer.

Adding to the confluence of these films is that I feel almost exactly the same way about them. I enjoyed them both a lot and was a little dissatisfied by them at the same time. If I had to recommend one over the other it would be A Serious Man, but only just.

And then, of course, there are the posters. Assume the position…

The Best Films of the 1990s

With just a few weeks of this decade still to go I’ve got to get my skates on coming up with a list of my favorite films of the ’00s and to be honest I’m not really looking forward to it. So in lieu of that for now I have dug up my Best of the ’90s list which, I’m happy to say, I still stand by ten years later. I never would have thought the ’90s were a particularly strong decade for cinema but I doubt my top ten of the ’00s is going to be anywhere near as strong as this.

 

1. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang, Taiwan, 1991)
2. SATANTANGO (Bela Tarr, Hungary, 1994)
3. NAKED (Mike Leigh, UK, 1993)
4. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (Martin Scorsese, USA, 1993)
5. GOODFELLAS (Martin Scorsese, USA, 1990)

6. HEAT (Michael Mann, USA, 1995)
7. DREAM OF LIGHT (Victor Erice, Spain, 1992)
8. BREAKING THE WAVES (Lars Von Trier, Denmark, 1996)
9. MY SEX LIFE (Arnaud Desplechin, France, 1996)
10. BOOGIE NIGHTS (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 1997)

Runners-up: AND LIFE GOES ON and THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES (Abba Kiarostami), BLUE (Krzysztof Kieslowski), THE GARDEN (Derek Jarman), GOODBYE SOUTH GOODBYE (Hou Hsiao Hsien), THE HOURS AND TIMES (Christopher Munch), INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA (The Brothers Quay), IN THE COMPANY OF MEN (Neil LaBute), JEANNE LA PUCELLE (Jacques Rivette), THE LONG DAY CLOSES (Terence Davies), A MOMENT OF INNOCENCE (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), NAKED LUNCH (David Cronenberg), NIL BY MOUTH (Gary Oldman), NOUVELLE VAGUE (Jean-Luc Godard), PORTRAIT OF A LADY (Jane Campion), PULP FICTION (Quentin Tarantino), STONE (Alexander Sokurov), THE THIN RED LINE (Terrence Malick).

 

Shining Ephemera

In honor of The Shining midnight shows at the IFC Center.

A poster by Polish designer Leszek Zebrowski

 

A doorway mural on Oranienstrasse, Berlin (thanks to I Dreamed Music)

 

The worst wake-up ever: The Shining cuckoo clock by Chris Dimino (thanks to Engadget)

 

Brilliantly oblique tribute poster from Tes One (courtesy of Grain Edit)

 

Poster by Jeff Kleinsmith for Rolling Roadshow screening of The Shining at the Timberline Lodge (the original Overlook Hotel) in Oregon in October 2008. 

 

First edition of the Stephen King book

 

 

The movie soundtrack LP

 

The British teaser poster based on a Daily Mirror spread

 

And, though everybody’s seen it, of course I need to add my favorite fake trailer (if not my favorite You Tube clip of all time)

White Ribbon Gold Palm

Michael Haneke finds redemption after Funny Games USA by channeling Bela Tarr and Carl Th. Dreyer to win the Palme d’Or yesterday for The White Ribbon.

Sidney Poitier’s Warm December

I’ve been on a bit of a Sidney Poitier kick lately, inspired by reading Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris’s indispensable book about the five films nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture in 1967, two of which—Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night—starred the great Sir Sidney. I’ve enjoyed watching him, even in hokey pieces like Lilies of the Field and To Sir, With Love, but never more so than in this obscure 1973 London-set romance which I Netflixed purely on the basis of this poster. Poitier plays a brilliant, widowed DC “ghetto doctor” who travels with his 10-year-old daughter to London to race motorcycles (as one does) and falls in love with the alluring, beautiful and doomed niece of the ambassador from Torunda, a fictional East African nation.

A Warm December, just released on DVD for the first time (and seemingly only to pad out the Sidney Poitier Collection that it’s included in), was Poitier’s second film as a director. His first, the western Buck and the Preacher (1972), he had taken over the reins of midway through production. December was a flop, but Poitier went on to become a hugely succesful comic director, helming vehicles for Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder and for 20 years holding the record for the highest grossing film by an African-American director for 1980’s Stir Crazy, until Keenan Ivory Wayans bested him with Scary Movie in 2000. A Warm December, a rather corny and quite touching weepie, is shot like a TV movie, with zooms galore and a terribly dated score, but Poitier never aspired to be Jacques Rivette (despite his occasional experimenting with non-synchronous sound).

What interest A Warm December has, beyond its very charismatic leads, is mostly incidental: its London setting with its Afro-centric enclaves, a succession of fabulous patterned shirts (mostly worn by Poitier, except when he’s walking around with his shirt off), and its plot revolving around international diplomacy, motor-cross racing, hydro-electric dams and sickle cell anemia. There is also a wonderful performance by South African singer Letta Mbulu singing a Miriam Makeba song. And, best of all, a scene in a nightclub where Poitier and Esther Anderson dance to an Afro-funk outfit called Zubaba. Zubaba, it turns out, is the band formerly known as Symarip, best known for their 1969 ska anthem “Skinhead Moonstomp.” 

Farewell New Yorker Films

In today’s New York Times it was announced that New Yorker Films, the oldest arthouse film distribution company in the U.S., is closing down, another victim of the recession, and one of the more personally painful for me. New Yorker Films, which has been in business since 1965, gave me my first job in New York, and my first start doing what I love. Ironically, it was a similar New York Times article in 1990, announcing that Dan Talbot’s Cinema Studio was closing down, that led me to write to Dan asking him for a job at his distribution company. I was hired to work on their catalogue (a veritable history of post-’50s international cinema), taught how to use PageMaker and spent many a lunch break watching 16mm prints of Straub-Huillet films and Herzog shorts in their screening room. I left in 1991 but I have continued editing, and occasionally writing, their catalogue ever since and I owe them a lot. They will be sorely missed.

The Best of 2008

MY FAVORITE FILMS OF THE YEAR

1. A CHRISTMAS TALE (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
2. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman, USA)
3. FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, France)
4. THE WRESTLER (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
5. ZIDANE: A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT (Douglas Gordon and Philippe Pareno, France)

6. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (Cristian Mungiu, Romania)
7. ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Werner Herzog, USA)
8. BALLAST (Lance Hammer, USA)
9. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (Mike Leigh, UK)
10. MOMMA’S MAN (Azazel Jacobs, USA)

Ten-and-a-half runners-up, in alphabetical order: THE BANK JOB (Roger Donaldson, UK); LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden); MAN ON WIRE (James Marsh, USA/UK); MARRIED LIFE (Ira Sachs, USA); MY WINNIPEG (Guy Maddin, Canada); PARANOID PARK (Gus Van Sant, USA); REPRISE (Joachim Trier, Norway); SECRET OF THE GRAIN (Abdel Kechiche, France); SNOW ANGELS (David Gordon Green, USA); SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico) and the first half of WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, USA)

[Still haven’t seen: CHE, THE CLASS, WALTZ WITH BASHIR, WENDY AND LUCY]

Five Best Undistributed Films

in alphabetical order: FOSTER CHILD (Brillante Mendoza, Philippines) at New Directors; GUEST OF CINDY SHERMAN (Paul H-O and Tom Donahue, USA) at Tribeca; THE HEADLESS WOMAN (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina) at the New York Film Festival; PLOY (Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Thailand) at Rotterdam; TOUT EST PARDONNÉ (Mia Hansen-Love, France) at Rotterdam and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema

Best Kids Film

AZUR ET ASMAR (Michel Ocelot, France, 2006)

Best 2007 Release Caught up with in 2008

HELVETICA (Gary Hustwit, UK)

Best Old Films Seen For the First Time in 2008

VIOLENT SATURDAY (Richard Fleischer, USA, 1955); WINGS (Larisa Shepitko, USSR, 1966); SERIE NOIRE (Alain Corneau, France, 1979); FRANCISCA (Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, 1981) and the programme of early Oliveira shorts at BAM

Happy Boxing Day

As the year winds down, the film I’m thinking about the most (granted I only saw it four days ago) is Darren Aronofsky’s beautiful passion play The Wrestler. It’s not a perfect film by any means: like the equally terrific Ballast, it worships at the temple of Dardennes (and the result is a film as un-Aronofskylike as you could imagine) but it misses the moral complexity of the Dardennes universe. Its story of a washed-up old pro attempting to mend fences with his estranged daughter verges on Hallmark and has moments of high fructose corn. But in its visual textures, incidental details and the sheer poignancy of its lead performance it is as good a film as I have seen all year. Maybe you have to have grown up with Mickey Rourke to fully appreciate this resurrection. Rourke was one of my favorite actors of the ’80s (in Diner and Angel Heart especially) and his betrayal of his talent was painful to watch. He is now a shadow of his former self, or, to be accurate, the ’80s Rourke was a shadow compared to the growling, hulking brute he is today. Gone is the lilting, purring voice that wooed Ellen Barkin and made him the softest of tough guys. And that sly, sweet smile has been pummelled into submission. To be honest Rourke needed do little more than shuffle onto the set to make this role work, but he inhabits it magnificently. Sean Penn’s transformation in Milk is equally miraculous, but I would imagine even Penn would be happy to see Mickey Rourke win an Oscar.

Back to reality

As you can see, the weather in Rotterdam was as grey and dreary as ever, thus postponing, once again, my attempts to see more of the city than the cosy square mile of the festival campus. I had hoped to visit the Rotterdam Zoo, where Peter Greenaway’s A Zed and Two Noughts was filmed (site of a spectacular gorilla escape last year), but I made do with seeing the new Greenaway film instead.

I saw 25 films in 5 days, more good ones than bad I’m happy to report, but I’m still recovering. Once I shake off the slough of jetlag I’ll post my Rotterdam run-down.

The Best of 2007

MY FAVORITE FILMS OF THE YEAR

1. THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
(Andrew Dominik, USA)
2. THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (The Coen Brothers, USA)
4. I’M NOT THERE (Todd Haynes, USA)
5. ZODIAC (David Fincher, USA)

6. RED ROAD (Andrea Arnold, UK)
7. KNOCKED UP (Judd Apatow, USA)
8. WE OWN THE NIGHT (James Gray, USA)
9. QUIET CITY (Aaron Katz, USA)
10. DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT (Julia Loktev, USA)

Call it “THERE WILL BE NO COUNTRY FOR JESSE JAMES”, a frontier triumvirate that is hard to choose between and which makes 2007 the best year for the Western since… um… 1959? And how about the best year for American movies? Maybe if I’d seen 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS already, or had made it to COLOSSAL YOUTH over the summer, this list wouldn’t be so entirely devoid of foreign-language films (the first time that’s happened in 21 years of making these lists). Mind you, I’m sticking to US 2007 theatrical releases and, if I wasn’t, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s sublime FLIGHT OF RED BALLOON and Carlos Reygadas’ stunning SILENT LIGHT (both to be released in 2008) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (which I saw in 2006) or the criminally unreleased LONGING by Valeska Grisebach (winner of the year’s best wind in the trees sequence) would certainly be contenders for the Top Ten.

More categories to come.