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| /Deadline |
With Captain Phillips,
Paul Greengrass continues to search for the line between good and evil, between
us and them, between ours and theirs.
He pitted the Irish Civil Rights protest movement against
militant British troops in the remarkable Bloody
Sunday. He took us inside of the one airplane that did not reach its target
on Sept 11, 2001 in United 93,
visually placing ordinary Americans beside Al Qaeda terrorists that would
profoundly change the world order.
He jumps forward in time again with Captain Phillips, this time to the 2009 hijacking of a cargo ship
by Somali pirates. Tom Hanks plays Richard Phillips, captain of the ship and
our hero.
The procedural is simple, its progression methodical and the
film is long at well over two hours. Yet the film – courtesy of Greengrass’
trademark jittery, tension-ridden visual style and Hanks’ towering performance
– never loses its immediacy, nor its power.
In this version of Greengrass’ “us versus them” installment,
Hanks’ all-American everyman is taken hostage and left to battle with Muse (an
extraordinary Barkhad Abdi in his debut role), an unhealthily-thin fisherman
with a moral code of his own.
Human motivation is at the heart of Greengrass’ work, and Captain Phillips continues on that path.
He, thankfully, neglects to parallel Muse and Phillips; rather, Muse is
indisputably our antagonist, but like all great villains, he is shaded and
complex. In fact, he is a byproduct of American hegemony.
“You took all our fish,” he tells Phillips, describing the
Somalis’ inability to fish for a living. By “you,” he means America, and by
“our fish,” he means the giant pools of fish that are netted out of the Somali
coast, and into American supermarkets.
His taking the boat hostage is initially intended to be a
purely monetary transaction, without complication. It goes awry, as one might
expect, and instantaneously Muse and his fellow pirates find themselves
fighting the power of the U.S. navy, with one man hostage as collateral.
There is a definite narrative here, beyond the survival story
of Captain Phillips. Before the film’s halfway mark, it becomes crystal clear,
even to Muse, that this can only go badly: that Captain Phillips can be
returned, and the pirates arrested, or that Captain Phillips can be killed, and
the pirates arrested.
Those working beneath Muse buy the ludicrous claims from the
Navy that the reward for Phillips is millions of dollars, and no penalty. Yet Muse
knows the game, and carries on with a quiet, defeated determination driven by
his justification: “We’ve come too far.”
The hopelessness of the Somalis’ scheme, their inevitable
banishment to the confines of American prison, and their illogical yet comprehensible
perserverence strangely reflect the origins of this hijacking – their readiness
to claim what they believed to be rightfully theirs because so much had been
inexplicably taken away.
Greengrass sat the everyman next to the terrorist in United 93, exploring each side in
silence, in close-ups and in the eventual fight for survival or death. In Captain Phillips, he continues to
explore the motivation of those pushing against the American way of life, only
here, he provides context as to where their entitlement and resentment stems
from.
And Greengrass remains on the side of the American, which is
a tad more puzzling in Captain Phillips
given the time we take to sympathize with Muse and the “opposition.” The
precision of the Navy, their ability to turn the Somalis into petty fools, is
essentially applauded as Phillips’ survival remains the goal of the film.
Greengrass’ intent in Captain
Phillips is more ambigious, and I suspect that is more a consequence of the
film’s conflicting themes and ideas than directorial intent. Captain Phillips shifts between
patriotic and critical, welcoming and gazing in awe at American supermacy while
admitting how damaging it can be to peoples we avoid even considering. The
question is, does Captain Phillips
get away with such a contradiction – can it have its cake and eat it too?
The answer is a reluctant yes, mostly due to the quietly
dignified performance from Hanks. It evolves from something that is relatably
unremarkable to an astonishing, Oscar-worthy creation of a full-blooded human
being. Hanks somehow makes those contrived sensibilites work. He sympathizes
with his captor, grows to understand him, even naively pushes for him toward a
more moral choice.
Yet Phillips keeps trying to escape. He is suffering, and we
suffer with him. Hanks is believable every second, and it his deeply felt work
that resonates, that keeps his survival at the center of the film even when
Greengrass wishes to suggest otherwise. It’s a cathartic portrayal that keeps Captain Phillips in perspective from
beginning to end.
Greengrass ends the film with a most powerful shot, even if
it epitomizes the film’s logical fallacy. With the Somalis’ lifeboat in the
center of the open sea, from a bird’s eye view Greengrass slowly pans out, and
slowly in frame come the massive U.S. Navy ships, surrounding the tiny raft.
It’s a hell of an image to end on, and proof that even when
he bites off a little more than he can chew, Greengrass is a visionary
director, one that knows where his story needs to end. B+
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| /Deadline |
Unlike Greengrass, J.C. Chandor makes a clean break from what
we assumed to be his style with All Is
Lost. Where Margin Call was
talky, All Is Lost is practically
word-free. Where Margin Call was
fast-paced, All Is Lost is unhurried
and deliberate. Where Margin Call
chronicled the collapse of a major global financial institution, All Is Lost removes every institution,
every aspect of civilization.
For 90 minutes, we are with an unnamed man (Robert Redford)
at sea. A shipping container destroys his yacht, and he is left to survive amid
violent storms, with no method of communication and a finite supply of food.
The world has been stripped away from All Is Lost, perhaps a twisted continuation to the pending global
doom lurking over Margin Call. The
only evidence of civilization – a shipping crate – is, after all, the
cataclysmic blow to the man’s peaceful sail.
The idea of All Is Lost
is an inimitable one, and a director’s dream – yet this is precisely where
Chandor’s film gets into trouble. Too often, All Is Lost feels like an exercise in filmmaking, with conscious
choices very clearly made that detract from the reality of the world Chandor
has created.
It is, intermittently, difficult to invest in the man’s
survival story when elements were so clearly inserted to fit the film’s style,
and not its substance. The choice to not have the man speak at all – save a
curse word here or there – feels forced and, frankly, a little improbable.
Just last month, Sandra Bullock’s Dr. Stone guided herself
through Gravity by telling herself to
keep calm, cracking jokes in between most every breath. It never felt like
director Alfonso Cuaron was handholding the audience – perhaps what Chandor was
trying to avoid – but rather, it felt real, and human.
Here, Redford stumbles around his boat. We can follow what
he’s doing without problem, but there’s something sad and lifeless about the
way he carries himself around; a lack of dialogue certainly aids that sensation.
This may be how we are intended to view the man – Chandor
gives no backstory, a decision I’m warmer to, but again this feels more
intentional than natural – but if this is the case, his story of survival and
trumph lacks the emotional bite of Gravity
or, for that matter, Captain Phillips.
Would a person, on a boat, all alone in a time of adversity, facing potential
death, really not say anything?
A lot of this is probably unfair, seeing as All Is Lost is a pretty spectacular visual
achievement, admirable in its tossing of conventions in favor of something
uniquely unseen. There’s a poetry to the silence, to the removal of the world,
to being left in a theater to watch one man fend for his life without
intervention. It’s a true bare-bones survival story.
Visually, you won’t see anything like All Is Lost this year – in particular, angles from below the sea,
looking up at the boat, with the sun through the reflection of the water, are
just sublime. Chandor stiches out his narrative through images; emotional
resonance stems from the volatility of the water, and the thickness of the
clouds. Despite the singularity of the space, a challenging, evolving visual
style keeps All Is Lost flowing.
And Redford does an admirable job too, with a physical
commitment that keeps the bleakening struggle authentic. He moves about his
stage gracefully, and hits his notes perfectly. While he does not do anything
particularly relevatory here, Redford grounds the film, and succeeds as its
center.
The central problem remains, though, that All Is Lost has potential that is too-squarely
realized. Wordless and totally isolated, it keeps you at a distance, unable to
fully connect. Chandor is a great filmmaker, and All Is Lost certainly does not change that. At the very least, it’s
a startlingly unique sophomore effort. B