The Company Men (2010)

The Company Men is a fairly sober, paint-by-numbers portrayal of America's economic crises, as experienced by three recently-layed off upper middle class corporate suits. Its main value is less in its execution - which is straightforward bordering on bland - than in its peculiarity: you just don't see economics in Hollywood very much these days.

Indeed, that's endemic to American culture: a complete purging of labor issues and economic strife from the collective cultural consciousness. Whoa, did we just sound like Gramsci? Anyway, this film's novelty value, along with the strong cast, merits a viewing. And it's an interesting follow-up to the much more class conscious Look Back in Anger; here too, class is an issue, particularly the appearance of it. A common statistic (fact!) is that Americans tend to over-identify with the middle class: everyone seems to think they're in it, even when many are not.

In The Company Men, the facade of upper middle classness hides crumbling decay as three mid- to upper-level managers are progressively laid off from their cushy corporate jobs. Bob (Ben Affleck) is young and cocksure, but even his budding symbols of success - the huge house, the Porsche, the golfclubs - become a liability when he can't compete with fresh MBA grads, eager and able to work for lower salaries in a race to the bottom. Phil (Chris Cooper) is the old timey American Dream incarnate; a Vietnam vet who worked his way up from the factory floor to the six figure salary. And then there's Gene (Tommy Lee Jones), the heart and soul of the business and, it seems, the only honest businessman left in America (or Boston, at least).

The film's structure and sympathies mark it as very similar to the Italian film, Il posto dell'anima - except the latter, being, well, Italian, focused much more on working class issues in an explicitly Socialist light. But both films explore the decline and decay of manufacturing jobs in a post-industrial West, and both use the triptych of young - middle - old (which could just as well stand for brash - vulnerable - wisdom) characters. Indeed, in both films, the middle character - Silvio Orlando in Il posto dell'anima, Chris Cooper in The Company Men - is set up as society's sacrificial lamb; the guy who did everything right and yet still lost. "My life just ended," Chris Cooper laments, "and nobody noticed." Indeed, Silvio Orlando was the Ideal Comrade Worker - selfless, honest, hard-working, good-humored. He was like a natural extension of Nino Manfredi's Worker Ideal in C'eravamo tanto amati (OK, we just watched that again yesterday, so we had to find a way to get it in here). And yet he still lost. Similarly, Chris Cooper fought for his country, worked in its factories and climbed the ladder, sending his daughter off to a destiny of Ivy League intelligentsia. But in the end, he gets screwed. (That's not to say the film's ending isn't inherently upbeat, promoting the hard-work can-do attitude of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.)

This focus on the pain of the upper middle class is restrictive, in some senses, but also very contextual; as we said above, most of America identifies with this class. The common laborer - here embodied with a pleasantly low-key, sardonic wit by Kevin Costner as Jack the Carpenter, Bob's brother-in-law - is given a much reduced role. He appears - and is decent, hard-working and honest. But his story is never really told, or even acknowledged.

The cast is uniformly appealing and strong, even if the narrative doesn't allow them much nuance. It was great to see Chris Cooper, who we are most fond of; especially since we've been cultivating a fantasy film in our head starring him as a 1900s Chicago union organizer, David Strathairn as a slaughterhouse laborer and Paul Giamatti as a driven, exploitative yet compelling beef baron. Best movie evar?! You bet. And this one? Decent. Wait for DVD. Cultivate your fantasy Upton Sinclair adaptation instead.


eventually, you will be able to buy the movie here...

The Tempest (2010)

We had been hearing about Julie Taymor's The Tempest for nigh on two years now, ever since Helen Mirren was announced to be playing the role of a female Prospero (called Prospera - catchy!). Imagine our delight and excitement when we learned that they were also adding some of our favorites - Chris Cooper! Djimon Hounsou! DAVID. STRATHAIRN! - to the mix.

However, The (girl) Tempest is a big mess; incoherent and over-the-top visuals coupled with a chopped-up Shakespeare that's barely recognizable. Most people agree (statistic!) that Shakespearean plots don't resonate with modern audiences anymore - twins, shipwrecks, fairies, love at first sight, those wretched proletarian comedy subplots, people being deceived by masks or a pair of pants - ha! We are not so easily duped as those Elizabethan yokels. And that's not why us modern folk usually watch the Bard - we watch it for his epic, fancy talking (so Elizabethan! so complicated! so fancy!). So when you remove the talking, you're left with a lot of silliness. And when you amp up the ridiculous elements with Xena: Warrior Princess-style CGI and loony, masala-style close-ups, the audience (or, at least, the PPCC) feels overwhelmed and eventually alienated. Nothing really could resonate in all that bombastic mishmash.

The plot: Prosper(a) (Helen Mirren), the exiled Duchess of Milan, is living on some random island with her daughter, Miranda (Felicity Jones). She is a great magician, and she uses her dark arts - along with the help of her enslaved fairy, Ariel (a gender-less Ben Wishaw) - to destroy a passing ship in a passing thunderstorm. Onboard are none other than all her political rivals: her conniving brother Antonio (Chris Cooper), King Alonso of Naples (David Strathairn), his brother Sebastian (Alan Cummings) and the kind-hearted consigliere (or somesuch) Gonzalo (Tom Conti). They are all shipwrecked together on one side of the island. On the other side emerges Alonso's son, Ferdinand (Reeve Carney), and - from a third angle - the dim-witted shipmates, Trinculo (a mighty Russell Brand) and Stephano (Alfred Molina). Add the controversial character of Calaban (Djimon Hounsou, in burnt, peely skin) to the mix, and you have the cast. Mostly, the story is about all of them bumping into each other and eventually bumping into Prospera, where they all apologize and Miranda says, "O brave new world! That has such people in it!" The end.

Hacking the text to pieces was really a shame, since so much was lost or garbled - ultimately appearing superficial and daft. Ferdinand and Miranda see each other and are immediately smitten. It's idiotic! OK, that always happens, but here, it's idiotic and inarticulate. This is also a shame, since the cast is really top-notch, and they do quite well given their muted, over-simplified dialogues: Helen Mirren is, of course, amazing in her role, and yes, there is some ephemeral interest in seeing the Prospero-Miranda dynamic become a mother-daughter thing. (It makes the Ferdinand treatment make a bit more sense, at least.) Similarly, Chris Cooper and Alan Cumming do well; while David Strathairn just mopes. Alfred Molina and Russell Brand basically do slapstick, and Djimon Hounsou's interpretation of Calaban is bravely, troublingly close to slave stereotypes. (We've seen productions where Calaban was played as a ghoul-buffoon; here, he's a proud, dignified, angry slave.) Ben Wishaw was fine, though his occasional breasts and lack of genitals distracted.

There were some strange moments, when the music and imagery came together to produce scenes from Dune; we half-expected Helen Mirren to declare, "Yes! For he is the Kwizatz Haderach!" Think fuzzy, reverb-heavy electric guitar slamming down on minor power chords, coupled with epic shots of Prosper(a) standing on cliff precipices.

It's a shame this movie emphasized its million visual ideas (much to its detriment; like the over-stuffed Daywatch) rather than its story or text. Even genuinely striking visuals were lost in the mush; one great moment, for example, was when Ariel explains to Prospera that all the nobles - while given a good scare - emerged scratchless from the shipwreck. In that moment, we see David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming and Tim Conti suddenly emerge, fully upright, in the rocky ocean, as if the water level itself was decreasing. A quirky, fun visualization of being unharmed! Alas that it was just a brief gem in a messy sea of good, bad and ugly.

Lone Star (1996)

Back in high school, the PPCC was taught that the old "melting pot" aphorism of American culture was considered passé, insensitive even, since it implied a homogenization of the diversity of immigrant cultures. Instead, we were supposed to say America is like a "tossed salad" - everyone jumping around together, joyous, distinct, fresh and crispy.

John Sayles' ballad about Texas, Lone Star, brings the "melting pot" idea back - and with a vengeance. A story about a Tex-Mex border town on the Rio Grande, it is all about intermingling - of the past and the present, of cultures and ethnicities, of legend and fact. Ultimately, the movie concludes that we're all a big family. But don't begin vomiting at the sight of such a Disney-style simplification: when Sayles says family, he means FAMILY. Angst-ridden, constantly clashing, unwillingly linked and reluctantly dependent on each other. The kind of family that stresses you out at the holidays. Not the kind of family that seems like a good idea when you're living alone in your apartment, independent of them and stress-free.


Ah ha! I have found a single star in a state of the lone star!


A visual triangle. The inner film nerd approves.

Rio County Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) sighs and snorts his way through sheriff life - he is tired of the realpolitik surrounding his job ("I'm a jailer," Sam laments. "I run a sixty-room hotel with bars on the windows."), he is tired of living forever in the shadow of his legendary father and previous sheriff, Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey, in flashbacks), and he is tired of pining for his high school sweetheart, schoolteacher Pilar (Elizabeth Peña). One day, when two of the local army guys (an excellent Stephen Mendillo, Stephen J. Lang) uncover a human skeleton and charred sheriff's star (a… LONE STAR, GET IT!) in the desert by their base, Sam is called in to figure things out. And he, and everyone else, just assumes it was the deed (!) of Buddy Deeds finally taking vengeance on the evil sheriff of yore, Charlie Wade (a vile Kris Kristofferson). Sam's investigation into this 40-year-old murder pulls in all the tangled history (and tangled present, for that matter) of the town - particularly the race and power relations between the African-Americans, Mexicans (and Mexican-Americans), "Anglos" and Native Americans.


Fathers and sons.


And epic longing. (Yay for Chris Cooper, btw!)

To this end, there are some great subplots which run tangential to the Deeds crime investigation - such as the Payne family, which have not one but two pairs of tense father-son battles: that between bar owner Otis (Ron Canada) and his military son Delmore (Joe Morton), and that between Delmore and his resentful teenage son Chet (Eddie Robinson). The Payne scenes manage to talk about militarism, estrangement and disappointment, and changing race relations. Then there is the Cruz family, with matriarch Mercedes (Miriam Colon), who runs a Mexican restaurant, insisting that everyone speak English ("Speak English! This is the United States!") and promptly calling border patrol every time she spots illegal immigrants sneaking through her property (she lives next to the river), and her daughter, the very same Pilar for whom Sam yearns.

Overall, it's a rich tapestry - a soup, even! definitely not a salad - with a variety of perspectives and emotional tones. The final, very American message of tabula rasa (which could be another way of saying cutting ties or turning away from heritage when it gets too complicated...) is delivered effectively and uniquely. As Otis comments, "Blood only means what you let it." Yeehaw!