Photo caption: Sally Hawkins in THE LOST KING. Courtesy of IFC Films.
In the The Lost King, an otherwise unfulfilled woman becomes a history hobbyist and literally digs up a British monarch. That monarch is the Shakespearean villain Richard III. The woman in question is Philippa (Sally Hawkins), who joins a cadre of misfits obsessed with rehabilitating Richard III’s image, which has suffered from the view that he murdered his own 12- and 10-year old nephews to cement his claim on the throne.
The story is based on fact. The real Phillipa didn’t succeed in turning Richard into a popular Good Guy, but she led a successful campaign that located Richard’s long-lost remains, buried under a parking lot in Leicester, and reinterred them in a historically more appropriate setting. Along the way, she had to battle lots of snooty academics and officials who “knew better”.
It’s a standard underdog story with two enhancements:
Sally Hawkins is a singular, irrepressible actress who gets to shine in a lead role, as she did in her art house hit Happy-Go-Lucky and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water.
The character of Philippa is interestingly and unexpectedly textured, with her chronic fatigue syndrome and her unusual relationship with her ex-husband (Steve Coogan, who also co-wrote).
The little cadre of Richard III cranks is especially funny.
Steven Frears is famous for directing movies like The Grifters and The Queen, for which he received Oscar nominations, and Dangerous Liaisons and High Fidelity. But it’s worth remembering that he has also made made many much smaller, but satisfying, movies: My Beautiful Launderette, Dirty Pretty Things, The Hit, Tamara Drewe, Philomena. The Lost King is one of these.
This is an enjoyable, non-challenging movie. It may not be a Must See, but it’s not a waste if time.
The Shape of Wateris an epic romance from that most imaginative of filmmakers, writer-director Guillermo del Toro. The Shape of Water may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
The story is set in 1962 Baltimore. Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is a mute woman who lives in a dark apartment above an aging downtown movie palace. She and her friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer) work as a janitors on the graveyard shift at a government research laboratory. The Cold War adventurer Strickland (Michael Shannon), a tower of menace, has captured an amphibian creature from the Amazon and has brought him in chains to a tank at the laboratory. The male creature, in the approximate form of a human, has dual breathing systems, so he can survive both under water and on the surface; it develops that he also has intelligence, feelings and even healing powers.
The scientist Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) wants to study Amphibian Man to discover how his species could benefit humanity. Strickland, on the other hand, wants to rush into killing and dissecting the creature. Strickland is a sadist, who enjoys brutalizing Amphibian Man with his cattle prod.
Elisa is repulsed by Strickland’s torture, and she feel compassion for Amphibian Man. She starts showing Amphibian Man some kindness. As Amphibian Man becomes more trusting of Elisa, he feels gratitude for her kindness. She cares about him, too, first with pity and then with the fondness of a pet owner. As Amphibian Man’s intelligence and feelings become more apparent, the two become more equal, and their mutual fondness blossoms into passion.
But Strickland’s nefarious plans force Elisa and her supporters into a race against the clock to save Amphibian Man. And so we’re off on a thriller, with a heist-like rescue and a chase, culminating in an ending of operatic scale.
Now this is a romance that transcends species. I totally bought into this. If you can’t, the movie is less moving and much, much more odd. Romance is often consummated sexually, and this one is, too.
Sally Hawkins is not conventionally pretty, yet del Toro didn’t make Elisa a stereotypical spinsterish ugly ducking. Elisa is vital, with a rich inner life, a wicked sense of humor and cultural interests, and who expresses herself sexually. She may only be a night janitor with a disability, but that doesn’t define her. Elisa’s defiant gaze at Strickland is one of the movie’s highlights.
Hawkins’ performance is a tour de force. Shannon makes for a formidable villain, especially when he clenches his own gangrenous fingers. Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer and Nick Searcy (Art Mullen in Justified) are all excellent.
Richard Jenkins’s performance as Elisa’s neighbor Giles is very special. This is a very vulnerable man, with his sexuality trapped in a closet, his growing sensitivity to his own aging and his career as a commercial artist becoming obsolete. With his episodes of resolute denial spotted with instances of inner strength, both the character and the performance are very textured. And Giles’ eccentric reactions to the story are very, very funny.
I highly recommend Guillermo del Toro’s interview on NPR’s Fresh Air , in which he discusses many of his choices in developing the story of The Shape of Water, including shaping the character of Elisa and the inspirations from The Creature from the Black Lagoon. In the interview, del Toro explains that, if this movie were made in 1962, Strickland would have been the hero, the Cold Warrior protecting humans from the alien creature. Instead of course, the heroes of The Shape of Water are a woman with a disability, a woman of color, a gay man and a commie spy and, of course, a monster.
None of the characters have any reason to envision that white male supremacy, oppression of gays or the Cold War would end, or even be tempered, in their lifetimes. It’s a graphic time capsule, with the grand movie palace empty, pushing out a sword and sandal epic to compete in futility with the small screen offerings of Dobie Gillis, Mr. Ed and Bonanza. It’s a world in which the coolest thing imaginable is a teal 1962 Cadillac De Ville.
Here’s where Guillermo del Toro’s imagination triumphs. This story could not be told as well in a novel, on stage or in any other artistic medium. It has to be a movie.
This is filmmaking at its most essential and most glorious. Del Toro, along with production designer Paul B, Austerberry and art director Nigel Churcher, create a set of vivid and discrete worlds, each with its own palette. There are Elisa’s and Giles’ dark apartments, the brooding institutional green of the laboratory and the bright mid-century modern domain of Strickland’s family.
This is a beautiful movie. Between del Toro’s filmmaking genius and Hawkins’ performance, The Shape of Water is a Must See, one of the best movies of the year.
Peter Skarsgaard and Cate Blanchett in BLUE JASMINE
Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine is a remarkably profound portrait of a woman seemingly ruined by circumstance and trying desperately to cling to who she thought she was. In a stunning performance, Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, a New York socialite whose billionaire swindler of a hubby has lost his freedom and his fortune to the FBI. Jasmine’s identity has been based on the privilege derived from her money, her marriage and her social station – and all of that is suddenly gone. Flat broke and reeling from the shock of it all, she seeks refuge with her working class San Francisco sister.
Despite her desperate situation, Jasmine arrives still brimming with deluded entitlement, Woody having calculated an undeniable resemblance to Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. But Blue Jasmine is more accessible than the great play Streetcar because it’s so damn funny. Jasmine’s pretensions are as pathetic as Blanche’s, but it’s very, very funny when her top shelf expectations collide with her current reality.
Cate Blanchett will certainly be nominated for an Oscar for this role. Blanchett is able to play a woman who is suffering a real and fundamental breakdown through a series of comic episodes. She flawlessly reveals Jasmine’s personality cocktail of charm, denial, shock, desperation and sense of authority.
I know that a lot of folks are put off by the creepiness of Woody’s real life marriage, but he has written a great female lead role for Blanchett, and he’s directed actresses to four Oscars in the past, as outlined in this recent New York Times article.
In my favorite scene, Jasmine faces her young nephews across a diner’s booth in a diner. They ask her questions with childish directness and inappropriateness. Her answers are candid from her point of view, but nonetheless astoundingly deluded – and just as inappropriate. The scene is deeply insightful and hilarious.
Who and what has brought Jasmine to her knees? Certainly she has been victimized by her amoral sleazeball of a husband, but she vigorously refuses to consider taking any responsibility herself. Can she be forced to look within? And is she strong enough to face what she would see?
Sally Hawkins is equally perfect as Jasmine’s good-hearted sister Ginger, a woman who doesn’t expect much from life and still gets disappointed. Andrew Dice Clay, of all people, is excellent as Ginger’s ex, a lug who rises to a moment of epic truth-telling. Louis C.K. brings just the right awkward earnestness to the apparently decent guy who takes a hankering to the long-suffering Ginger. Alec Baldwin nails the role of Jasmine’s husband, a man whose continual superficial charm almost masks his cold predatory eyes, and it’s a tribute to Baldwin’s skill that he makes such a natural performance seem so effortless.
Playing a primarily comic character, Bobby Cannavale delivers a lot of sweaty energy, but with too much scenery chewing. The great actors Peter Skarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg do what they can with far less textured characters.
The Wife thought Blue Jasmine dragged in places, and she was distracted by some components that didn’t ring true about the San Francisco setting – two key working class characters with Tri-State Guido accents and a Sunday afternoon cocktail party where the men wear neckties; she’s dead right on both points, but they didn’t bother me.
Blue Jasmine may not rise to the level of Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Husbands and Wives, but it’s a pretty good film with a superlative, unforgettable performance.
