satire

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS: more subtlety, please

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Photo caption: Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson in in TRIANGLE OF SADNESS. Courtesy of NEON.

The biting satire Triangle of Sadness is very funny and is at its best in the first, most subtle moments. Yaya (Charlbi Dean) and Carl (Harris Dickinson) are a couple, both professional models. Because of Yaya’s status as an influencer, they are comped a cruise on a luxury yacht. This puts them amidst a boatful of superrich fellow passengers, and Triangle of Sadness, like Parasite and Knives Out is Eat-The-Rich cinema. It’s fun to laugh at the rich, with their entitlement, tone deafness and absurd customer requests.

The cruise starts going horribly awry, even before the formal captain’s dinner is scheduled during a ship-tossing storm. Eventually, things get all Lord of the Flies. The tone of Triangle of Sadness evolves from pointedly witty to all-out comic mayhem, a la the Marx Brothers, I Love Lucy or The Hangover. As the humor gets broader, there are belly laughs, but the humor is no longer as smart. And Triangle of Sadness would be more watchable if it were shorter than 2 1/2 hours, too.

The sly beginning of the film is brilliant, with a memorable and telling scene about picking up the check in a restaurant. And funny little Easter Eggs abound, like the first names of an elderly British couple and the dramatic express delivery of a mysterious case that we learn contains jars of Nutella.

Triangle of Sadness was written and directed by Ruben Ostlund. His first notable film, Force Majeure, was a masterpiece of subtle humor. Having lessened the subtlety, his next two inferior satires, The Square and Triangle of Sadness have each won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Go figure. Anyway, I recommend that you watch Force Majeure on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu or YouTube.

The cast is very good. Charlbi Dean is excellent as the vivacious, frivolous and admittedly manipulative Yaya; (Dean died suddenly of a viral infection before the film’s theatrical release). I really admired Harris Dickinson’s performance as the dim and spineless Carl. Vicki Berlin is very good as the put-upon head steward. Zlatko Buric soars as a Russian fertilizer magnate, the self-described “King of Shit”. Woody Harrelson is very funny as the yacht’s alcoholic, Marxist captain, who does not suffer fools.

The most memorable performance is by Dolly DeLeon, who plays a character almost invisible until the final act, when she becomes pivotal and gives DeLeon the movie’s best opportunity for a killer line reading. She nails it.

I enjoyed most of Triangle of Sadness, less so as it became broader (and longer). It’s always fun to kick the rich, and Ruben Ostlund is a caustic observer of their frailties.

JOJO RABBIT: a joyous and hilarious movie about the inculcation of hatred

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JOJO RABBIT

Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. His protagonist is the ten-year-old German boy Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), growing up during the final years of World War II. Jojo lives with his mom (Scarlett Johansson) because his dad is away (and we learn that the father is likely dead), It’s a tough childhood in these conditions, and Jojo copes with the help of an imaginary friend, who happens to be Adolph Hitler, played uproariously by Waititi himself.

Waititi doesn’t play the historical Hitler; he plays a benign and reassuring figure that is imagined by a child brought up on Nazi propaganda. He fills that role that uncles and grandads get to be with kids – the cherished figure who is always on your side and never make you do your chores. Of course, a playful and nurturing Hitler is absurd, and Waititi is brilliantly funny.

Jojo tries to fit in with the Hitler Youth, and his hobby is innocently filling a notebook with illustrations of the most hideous Jewish stereotypes that he has been taught. What we understand but Jojo doesn’t, is that his mom is risking her life in the anti-Nazi Resistance. She’s also been hiding the Jewish girl Elsa (Thomasin Mackenzie) in the attic a la Anne Frank.

Thomasin MacKenzie in JOJO RABBIT

Jojo discovers Elsa, and , as is usually the case with a ten-year-old boy and a fifteen-year-old girl, she becomes the boss of him. He gets an up close lesson in Jewishness, and it’s a revelation to him. It’s also clear that Germany is losing the war, although Jojo, as a child, is slower to connect the dots about that than are the adults. As the propaganda is unpeeled, the absurdities of the hatred and scapegoating are revealed to Jojo.

Roman Griffin Davis is a perfect choice to play the relatable innocent Jojo. Thomasin MacKenzie, so genuine and ethereal in Leave No Trace, is wonderful here, too. The entire cast is good, especially Johansson, Sam Rockwell as a cynical army officer, Rebel Wilson as a Nazi true believer and Stephen Merchant as a grinning Gestapo goon.

Even more than most movies, this is a film of its time. Five years ago, we might not have seen the value of a movie discrediting the Joseph Goebbels approach – pounding outrageous lies into a mass audience made gullible by its own dissatisfaction, targeting the “other” as blameworthy for all ills. But here we are, 74 years after the destruction of the Nazis, once again watching blowhard demagogues drumming up hatred for minority groups and scapegoating immigrants – in the US and Europe and around the globe. With its skewering of manufactured hatred and the Big Lie, this witty and ultimately sweet film resonates.

I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter. This is going to be an audience favorite.

THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE: pointed satire in the form of a heist movie

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Alexandre Landry and Maripier Morin in THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

In the pointed satire The Fall of the American Empire, Pierre-Paul (Alexandre Landry) chafes at his dead-end blue-collar job as an express freight delivery driver; he feels that, with his PhD in Philosophy, he has been unjustly screwed out of a much better life by the System. He may be right, but he’s also a self-absorbed putz, who is justifiably dumped by his girlfriend. But then he happens across a windfall fortune of ill-gotten cash – and keeps it. The critical questions, of course, are how he can escape from the ruthless gang and the corrupt police who want to recover the money, and how will he be able to spend the money without getting caught? Pierre-Paul is a heads-in-the-clouds intellectual, and he is totally over-matched.

Fortunately, Pierre-Paul makes the acquaintance of a criminal mastermind, Sylvain ‘The Brain’ Bigras (Rémy Girard), who has just been released from prison. Pierre-Paul also can’t resist blowing some of his newfound treasure on Montreal’s most expensive escort, the astonishingly beautiful Aspasie (Maripier Morin). She used to be the mistress of the powerful banker Taschereau (Pierre Curzi), and soon Pierre-Paul has a team of confederates with real know-how.

Veteran French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand portrays a society corrupted head-to-toe by the capitalist imperative to acquire more and more money. And all of the characters make a point of insisting getting theirs in American dollars. The two older guys – one a lifelong outlaw and convict and the other a socially and politically prominent banker – hit if off immediately; after all, they’re both crooks.

Arcand comes at his films from the the Left, but he skewers the doctrinaire Left with equal glee. He pokes fun at the personal foibles of individuals on the Left, but saves his savagery for the inequalities of Capitalism. While he is sending up the entire Capitalist system. he makes his points without descending into a screed. All the fun in The Fall of the American Empire is dotted with realistic – and some real – plight of the homeless – depicted neither with finger-wagging or as maudlin.

The satire fits into the formula of a heist film – the assembling of a team to pull off a job. Of course, here they already HAVE the money, and they don’t need to steal it. To get the benefit of the money, they need to launder it and hide it from tax authorities.

Rémy Girard in THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

Arcand stalwarts Rémy Girard and Pierre Curzi both give superb performances. Vincent Leclerc, as a homeless man who volunteers at a soup kitchen, has an especially moving scene.

Arcand is known for his trilogy The Decline of the American Empire (1986), The Barbarian Invasions (2003 and Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film) and Days of Darkness (2006 – which I haven’t seen).

While the love story between Pierre-Paul and Aspasie and the Robin Hood aspect of our heroes’ plans are fantasies, The Fall of the American Empire has an authenticity at its core – the impact of disparity of wealth in a system rigged in favor of the Haves. And it’s damn funny – progressively funnier as the money-laundering scheme takes shape. The Fall of the American Empire opens June 7 in the Bay Area, and will spread to more local theaters in June.

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU: audacious and savagely funny

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Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

The savagely funny social satire Sorry to Bother You rips both the excesses of 21st century capitalism and the popular response to those excesses – apathetic submissiveness.  This may be the most original American film of the year.

Sorry to Bother You is set with specificity in Oakland, but the story is about the greater corporate-dominated culture.  A sinister corporation named Worry Free flourishes by enlisting consumers to “lifetime contracts” for their employment and household needs; Worry Free clients/employees are provided for life with meals, housing (in barracks crammed with bunk beds) and clothing (hospital scrubs) in return for menial factory labor.  The Worry Free system, of course, is slavery.  Almost nobody cares about that – this is a vapid culture where the most popular TV game show is I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me, where each week’s contestant is beaten and humiliated for mass entertainment.  Only the insurgent group Left Eye resists, with graffiti and guerilla actions.

Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield), a young man without prospects, is living in his uncle’s Oakland garage with his avant-garde artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson).  Cassius is overjoyed to finally score a telemarketing job, even though his new boss explains that every applicant is hired.  Cassius’ telemarketing career is futile until he acts on a tip from an older colleague (Danny Glover) to “use your white voice”.  Suddenly, Cassius vaults to the top of the telemarketing world, and is promoted to make big money pitching Worry Free’s slave labor force to global manufacturers. This raises the question, when does “success” become “selling out”?

Complicating matters for Cassius, his former telemarketing buddies and Detroit take on The Man by organizing a union.  Cassius becomes both the butt of a viral YouTube video and estranged from his support system just as Worry Free’s founder (Armie Hammer) offers Cassius an even bigger opportunity.  Finding slavery not  profitable enough, Worry Free is about to launch what is horrifically called “the future of labor” – a sci-fi solution to create a work force “more durable and compliant” than human slaves.  If Cassius decides to expose the atrocities, how will the public react?

Sorry to Bother You is the first feature as writer-director for Bay Area artist and rapper Boots Riley,  It’s an impressive film debut for Riley, who has proven himself to be a first-rate social observer and satirist.

Lakeith Stanfield is excellent as the stoic, hunched Cassius, and so is the rest of the cast (Thompson, Glover, Steven Yuen, Omari Harwick, Germaine Fowler).  Armie Hammer’s performance as the unapologetically monstrous entrepreneur is delicious.  Kate Berlani sparkles as the new telemarketing “team leader”, who, having drank the Kool-Aid, spouts corporate management babble.

Sorry to Bother You is a riot – in the comedic sense and also as sociopolitical disruption.  Nary a joke goes awry, from Detroit’s self-crafted earrings to the security code in the corporate elevator.  And Riley plays a final joke for us (and on us) in the closing credits.

GODARD, MON AMOUR: squandering artistic genius with political dilletantism

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Louis Garrel in A scene from Michel Hazanavicious’s GODARD, MON AMOUR, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Godard, Mon Amour is a bitingly funny portrait of flawed genius. Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) pays tribute to the genius of filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s early career while satirizing Godard’s personal excesses.

Godard, Mon Amour traces the three pivotal years after Godard married Anne Wiazemsky, the 19-year-old star of his La Chinoise. Godard (Louis Garrel) is age 37. In the preceding seven years he has helped revolutionize cinema as a leader of the French New Wave. He has made three masterpieces: Breathless, Contempt and Band of Outsiders. This is the Godard of “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.”

But now Godard has become a doctrinaire Maoist and rejects his past work. He sees himself as a thought leader of revolutionary politics – but that is a delusion. He’s just a political amateur, a poseur, a tourist.

Stacy Martin (center) in a scene from Michel Hazanavicious’s GODARD, MON AMOUR, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.

“Godard is dead”, Godard declaims. But young Anne (Stacy Martin) has hitched her star to the old Godard, the master of cinematic innovation and rock star, not this new dogmatic Godard.

This is also a snapshot of 1967, when many on the French Left believed that revolution in France was around the corner.  By 1969, it was apparent to virtually everyone that this had been a mirage, that revolution was not going to happen.  To everyone but Godard, who stubbornly stuck with his dogma.

Louis Garrel, his dreamboat looks glammed down with Godard’s bald spot, is often very funny as he deadpans his way through Godard’s pretensions.  In Godard, Mon Amour, Godard’s thinking has become so devoid of humor, nuance, texture and ambiguity that his art has become one-dimensional and boring.  Indeed, I have found all of the Godard films since 1967’s Weekend to range from disappointing to completely unwatchable.  Godard is alive at age 87 and still making movies today – and they all suck.

In his very biting send-up of Godard’s personal failings, Michel Hazanavicius pays tribute to Godard’s groundbreaking cinematic techniques.  We see jump cuts, breaking the fourth wall, shifting between color and negative imagery,
subtitling the characters’ interior thoughts over their spoken dialogue and references to earlier movies.  It’s all very witty.

There’s even a motif of repeatedly broken spectacles as an jomage to Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run.  In one of the more obvious jokes, Godard and Anne debate whether either would choose to appear nude in a movie while they walk around their room in complete, full-frontal nudity.

The more of Godard’s films you have seen, the more enjoyable you will find Godard, Mon Amour. If you don’t get the allusions to Godard’s filmmaking, you may find the protagonist of Godard, Mon Amour to be miserably tedious.  I saw Godard, Mon Amour at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It opens this Friday in the Bay Area.

THE SQUARE: ambitious, brilliant and almost cohesive

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Claes Bang in THE SQUARE. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The Square, the social satire from Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund is one of the most ambitious movies of the year.  Often LOL funny, and just as often uncomfortable, The Square hits moments of triumph that would constitute a great movie if they were braided together more cohesively.

The Square is set in a world that is ripe for mockery – Christian (Claes Bang) is chief curator at a Stockholm museum of modern art.   The museum is funded by the very rich, and the art is impenetrably pretentious, inaccessible to all but those predisposed to  deconstruct it (or at least pretend to).  One installation is described in straight-faced mumbo jumbo as “relational aesthetics”.  Another is a roomful of conical piles of rubble, with a museum guard rebuking visitors with a stern “no pictures!”.

Christian is comfortable in his privilege, but he is curious about exploring social inequity – but only as an intellectual exercise. Christian is interested in street beggars (and finds one especially ungrateful one), and The Square is filled by “help me” moments.  He is victimized by a robbery that seems like performance art, and  sets off on an adventure called the “Tesla of Justice”, which goes horribly awry.

There are lots of laughs in The Square.  Christian admonishes a colleague not to use Comic Sans font in a threat letter.  There’s a very funny tug of war in a post-coital spat.  A self-congratulatory on-stage interview with a precious artist wearing a blazer over pajamas, is disrupted by an audience member with Tourette’s who ejaculates “cock godammit”  and the like, all while the audience pretends it’s all ok.  And there’s a riotous thread with PR guys making a BS pitch that results in the very most counter-productive promotional video (think Springtime for Hitler in The Producers).

Östlund is very gifted at finding the humor in interruptions.  The most serious, intimate and formal discussions are interrupted by a baby crying, construction noise and lots of cell phones ringing.

And, finally, there is a museum opening gala with a “welcome to the jungle” theme.  This segment of The Square could stand alone as a sort film and probably win an Oscar.  (Again, completely universal terror is interrupted by a ringing cell phone.)  But, it’s unclear how this fits inside The Square’s themes.

Elisabeth Moss and Claes Bang in THE SQUARE. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The Square is very well-acted.  Claes Bang is exceptional as Christian, exuding the ennui of Marcello Mastroianni in 8 1/2, Gabriele Ferzetti in L’Avventura and David Hemmings in Blow-up.

As an American journalist, Elisabeth Moss (who is always excellent) gets to show us her playful side, which is a treat;  there’s a wonderful Moss moment when her eyes tell us she’s made a decision about her sex life while in the restroom line.

The most stunning performance is by Terry Notary as the performance artist at the gala.  Notary, a stunt coordinator, choreographer and movement coach, is a master of motion capture, and his work has been featured in the Planet of the Apes and The Hobbit franchises and Andy Serkis’ Jungle Book.  It’s one thing to imitate an ape, but Notary’s performance in The Square plays off of and dominates a banquet room full of other actors.  It’s a really singular performance.

Terry Notary (on table) in THE SQUARE. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

I loved Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, which made my list of Best Movies of 2014
Force Majeure was Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.  Force Majeure was a satirical drama with some very funny moments; The Square is a satirical comedy with some very serious themes.

The Square is a movie that my head liked a lot, but it didn’t thrill my heart.  Filled with brilliant moments, it just doesn’t hold together as one cohesive great movie.

[SPOILER: At the end, Christian tries to be genuinely helpful by making amends –  but he is proven ultimately and ironically helpless.]

https://youtu.be/HR0ROkf3a6U