Film brief: LISTEN UP PHILIP

Elisabeth Moss (Tribeca)

Listen Up Phillip is spectacularly-acted, wonderfully-shot and intelligently-written. But it falls short. It’s not all it can be. Its perspective is a bit scattered to make this into a great movie. Director Alex Ross Perry brings out some powerful performances from Jason Schwartzman and Elizabeth Moss, but the interest fizzles midway through. The pathos of their self-absorption makes this portrait powerful, but its lack of focus – thematically and character-wise – waters down its strengths. The relationships are obtuse and, while that might be the point, Perry's point-of-view becomes befuddled because of it . The movie is much like its central character: it wants you to like it even though its hollow interior and dull exterior – played up, at times, to a fault – leaves you surprisingly empty. And the humor, present at the beginning, is simply gone midway.

Phillip Friedman (Schwartzman) is a published novelist and cannot connect to a single individual except for the emotionally-crippled artist Ashley Kane (Moss). The movie is strongest when these two are together. But when Philip leaves to hang-out with his literary hero Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce) the backbone of Perry's script unravels. Really, there are many ideas concurrently working out in these vignettes, to the point where neither Ashley’s crippled, self-destructive nature nor Philip’s hollow narcissism are explored in a compelling enough manner to justify its length. Pryce is solid, but his character Ike weighs down detracts from the focus, where out interest originally resided.

Movie lovers of the world, don’t feel obligated to like this film because of its obvious strengths; rather, criticize it for not being at the level it needed it to be, and ponderously wavering in its own head, leaving us scratching our heads and slightly detached. That is why the strengths are frustrating: because this movie should be better. Mr. Perry, re-watch Nicole Holofcener and Woody Allen to better channel the expression of self-centered, bourgeois loneliness. Don’t let your movies meander, lavishly dressed like a Wes Anderson flick yet flat-footed and clumsy all the same. B-

David's full review is here.

Film review: LISTEN UP PHILIP

Elisabeth Moss and Jason Schwartzman do great work in the mellow Listen Up Philip (/Sundance)

Alex Ross Perry’s newest feature – and highest-profile to date – is Listen Up Philip, and it’s a curious beast. At his best, Perry reminds me of a young Wes Anderson – his style is as close and freewheeling as Anderson’s is geometric and closed-in, but there’s a comparable specificity in worldview and humor. Moreover, Philip is indelibly marked: Perry’s attraction to selfishness and to the artistic mind (which are, by no means, mutually exclusive) is fully on-display.

Perry’s focus here is exclusive to artists; Philip (Jason Schwartzman, excellent) has achieved moderate success with the publishing of his second book, but profound insecurity and incurable frustrations-with-the-world prevent him from attaining happiness and contentment, not to mention any greater achievements. His relationship with girlfriend Ashley (Elisabeth Moss), a photographer finding her own success, is fading, and his relationship to the written word is at an indescribable standstill.

Philip is introduced as really, truly, insufferable. He meets up with old college flings and friends and abrasively punishes them for not believing in him all those years ago. His demands to publicists, to his manager and even to Ashley reflect an astonishing self-absorption and nerve. But buried beneath it, Schwartzman ably conveys perpetual dissatisfaction and unending insecurity. Perry doesn’t hold back in demonstrating just how cruel Philip can be, but there’s both a comedic and dramatic intent here.

Listen Up Philip isn’t interested in big answers about artistic minds or cracking relationships.  When most effective, it’s a caustically funny and emotionally resonant character study that jumps between three interconnecting stories (Moss and Schwartzman are joined by Jonathan Pryce as Ike, Philip’s mentor that eventually houses him in his country getaway), each about people trying to move past specific points in their life. There are unifying ideas of regret – Ashley wasting years with the miserable Philip, Ike contending with the consequences of his youthful pretensions pushing his family and friends away – and identity affirmation, and they connect nicely. When Philip leaves Ashley, a significant portion of time is dedicated to just watching her move on, carve out an individual identity, and rest with her own prickliness and capacity for coldness. It’s a small albeit notable vignette that represents Perry’s directorial effort at its most successful.

Perry’s eye is luminously cinematic and aides in providing Listen Up Philip with an unusual (albeit welcome) affection for, and understanding of, its characters. It’s also steadily, strikingly intelligent, well-balanced in its focus on individual people, on family and relationship dynamics, and on the connection between an artist and their work. There’s never a moment that feels false or strained, out-of-place or poorly-developed. To an impressive degree, Perry earns his big moments, and despite his atypical narrative structure, the film flows beautifully.

So, with all that in mind, Listen Up Philip may do all of the little things right, but it oddly fails to land. Its opening third is remarkably funny and beautifully acted, but it loses its steam fast. Its looseness is both the blessing and the curse here: there’s just a general lack of momentum and of intrigue, to the point where it feels like the film is meandering. Again, it’s always intelligent; well-observed and crafted as it is, it too often has too little to offer. It loses its comedic bite and its character focus eventually strains to compel – while Ike’s story, for instance, ties into Philip’s effectively and speaks to his potential downward spiral, it just doesn’t grab you. Pryce does solid work here, but it feels both peripheral and seriously lacking in urgency. Having just raved about a film that is similarly momentum-averse, this is not necessarily troublesome. But in Listen Up Philip, what holds you? Its acerbic humor, for one thing, but that fades over time. Philip gets more serious and approaches its characters with an increasingly-dramatic focus, but the narrative doesn’t warrant it.

For much of his second half, Perry occupies a soft middle ground, lightly funny and dramatically understated. Once Ms. Moss, a radiant presence here, fades, and our attention shifts to Ike’s reinvigorated desire to write with the presence of the protégée Philip, and Philip’s realization that there might not be anything to search for that will fill that illusive hole, Listen Up Philip is a gentle downer. It’s not quite painful enough, not quite funny enough, not quite interesting enough. The idiosyncrasy and authenticity of Perry’s style is what prevents his film from seriously working. One can appreciate the resistance to artificial conflict and gratuitous melodrama, and there are great performances abound here – Krysten Ritter pops up in a nice, small turn as Ike’s daughter – but when all is said and done, that resistance isn’t replaced by anything. Once the film ends in an intellectually-strong albeit typically-understated place, you get the feeling that Listen Up Philip just floated on by. It’s risk-averse – and considering how gloriously unpleasant it began, this fact is the movie’s greatest let-down.

Grade: B-

In theaters and available via VOD now.

Andrew's brief on the film can be accessed here.

Second opinion: FORCE MAJEURE

(Plattform)

Force Majeure is precise yet humanistic, aesthetically beautiful yet emotionally searing, much in the vein of filmmakers ranging from Michael Haneke to Stanley Kubrick. Les Arcs – a ski resort in an isolated area of France – is the overwhelming and frigid backdrop to Tomas and Ebbas’ inner turmoils. A question is raised: What type of people are we in severest of circumstances? Bourgeoisie morals are on the line here because our greatest comforts will turn out to be our greatest sources of anxiety in Force Majeure. Vacation – we learn as the film unfolds – is a placeholder for complacency. Ostlund is asking at what point does love become passive and does “family” – as a concept - become a stifling fixture that oppresses our inner natures. No viewer – I don’t care who you are - will leave the theater and not reconsider to what lengths they would go to protect the ones they love.  

Here’s an ordinary vacation, an ordinary family, taking time off from work to spend a week skiing in the beautiful Alpine slopes. But it’s all artificially rendered, constructed for the sake of the vacationers. In the beginning, we’re treated to how exactly these slops are made skiable for the tenants of the resort. The cinematography is at once breathtaking and calculated in the same way that a Wes Anderson movie can feel – and yes, I couldn’t stop making comparisons to Grand Budapest Hotel mainly because it’s also taking place in a resort in the isolated French Alps. Two different movies, of course. The difference is that, for Anderson, setting and character are synonymous and humor is commonplace. Ostlund is an aesthete in a stricter and more confining sense, pitting the dramas of Ebba and Tomas against an even greater drama – that of man versus nature.

And nature is something both internal and external. For Tomas, his natural instinct is to run away from his children and wife in the face of danger. Visually perfect and utterly breathtaking, the scene where the avalanche cascades towards them speaks to our inability to not only curb nature’s unpredictability but our own actions as well. Tomas runs away from his family, even as he comments that the avalanche is “controlled” and not going to hurt them. When this is proven to be false, Ebba is the parent who sticks it through – not Tomas.

The drama on the film hinges around this issue. The story – after this moment – chronicles how a man can come to terms with his inner nature and how a relationship can survive such a painful realization. My favorite scenes were when Ebba spills all her anxieties and fears about Tomas to another couple who they’re having dinner and wine with. And another excellent scene is where Tomas cannot stop crying and his family huddles around him to show him comfort despite his flaws. Exquisitely acted by our leads Johannes Bah Kuhnke and Lisa Loven Kongsli, each of these scenes – and, arguably the movie – are structured around self-realization in some way or another. When Ebba shows the video of Tomas running away, he is faced with his cowardice and it tears into him like a spade piercing a hardened heart. He can’t deny it any longer – and the mere fact that he was so insistent on denying his action makes him an even shittier husband, revealing a further rupture. These scenes never feel melodramatic and judgment is never passed – instead, we’re the observing characters in the way scientists observe natural phenomenon – with patience and resilience to make complex and well-considered observations. The irony is that the film’s moral questions argue against such considered and thoughtfulness because people – like nature – are enigmas.

But don’t worry – this movie is often funny, deflating the seriousness without losing its handle on the central tone. I applaud the writing for delving into the absurdities as it allows us to invest more into their humanity – a favorite of mine is when the janitor is watching them from above, smoking his cigarette and they implore him to leave. Later on, they’re fighting outside the room once more to escape their children’s eyes and ears and then they get locked out – and, yes, they need him to get in. And even the scenes I cited – with their intense dramatic rectitude – are quite comical as well. The other couple – awkwardly watching this other couple come unhinged – don’t know how to quite react to such seriousness. It’s odd, uncomfortable, and oh-too-serious so, when they leave, they burst out into laughter. Just one example out of many of the film’s capability of balancing drama and comedy without hitting its viewers over the head. Let’s not forget Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as an ironic counterpoint – it is high-drama at its most ordinary, bursting out suddenly like an avalanche even in the most seemingly-ordinary moments.

The film juxtaposes these scenes of intense humanism with those of pronounced aestheticism, and this is where the problems begin. The naturalism of the unfolding plot complements Ostlund’s eye for the slopes, the mountains, the artificial snow, etc. But I felt the balance he was going for – the thematic purpose of his filmmaking choices – diluted rather than contributed to the dramatic momentum. The experience becomes more cerebral than experiential. He wasn’t able to synthesize the pursuit of artistic beauty and searing drama in a way that kept me fully engaged. At times, I kept saying to myself, “This is a great movie” rather than feeling the weight of the film’s ideas. Think to when we’re watching Tomas and his friend snow down the mountain – it’s pretty long, and I stopped being entranced by the artificial beauty quite quickly. Yes, he’s yelling like a wolf to express his inner-rage. But it wasn’t compelling.

And how about when Tomas was drinking beer with his friend and the whole-mix up takes place. I get that it’s trying to show another side of this man as he contemplates a life separate from his family, a life as a man drifting from one relationship to another. It’s also meant to be comedic relief. But, once again, I simply didn’t care that much about the humor or the point being made about his character. And nature shots, sometimes but not all the time, when they weren’t outstanding me with their beauty, felt unnecessarily over-drawn. What I’m getting at is that Ostlund was in his head sometimes, and I never fully committed to his vision even as I admired and respected it.

The ending encapsulates how I internalized Force Majeure. They’re on a bus and the driver is incompetent, almost driving these people off a cliff. And if you’ve ever gone down a mountain on a bus – I have – and you’re far up, you know that Ostlund does an excellent job of evoking those paranoid and stomach-churning sensations. Ebba is having a meltdown, and forces the driver to let her, Tomas and the children off. Other people join her and the bus drives swiftly on. They’re left to go down the road, and we get an ending shot of all of them walking. Of course, the viewer is meant to extract thematic significance from this final moment: I think Ostlund is trying to paint a portrait of individuals, once feeling like they were powerless, claiming control despite the fact we know it’s illusory. But really, I was over it by this point, feeling the drama and ideas of the movie diluted too much by Ostlund’s aesthetic inclinations.

The film’s narrative is drawn out over six days – with “Day 1,” “Day 2,” “Day 3” displayed as the action unfolds – to remind us how long and how short vacations can be when they’re bad. And this vacation really isn’t fun: it’s frigid, suffocating and confined. Tomas and Ebba are always looking for ways to leave their family, have “me-time,” to escape what they essentially view as a flimsy marriage, drawn together through their bourgeoisie affections rather than an intense love. That’s how I felt watching this movie: it was a long, 2-hour vacation, stuffy at moments, certainly engaging at other times, obligated to appreciate at others despite boredom, an experience I ultimately wouldn’t have minded leaving a little earlier despite its clear strengths.

Grade: B

David's rave review can be accessed here.

Film review: FORCE MAJEURE

Johannes Kuhnke and Lisa Loven Kongsli are both exceptionally naturalistic in Force Majeure (Plattform) 

Isolation and distance pervades Force Majeure, Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund’s fictional account of a family vacation in the French Alps gone awry. This film is set far up and far away; it’s covered in snow, mercilessly devoid of distraction and routine.

A middle-aged married couple, Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), take a week off with their two children. Ebba is tired of solely caring for her children and her home; Tomas works too hard and for too long at his indistinguishable job. Östlund’s method of introduction is coldly romantic: there’s an old world typicality in the way Tomas and Ebba relate, in the way their family of four operates, in the way they choose a tourist-ridden, activity-laden ski resort as their vacation spot.

And that’s exactly the point. Force Majeure has a lot on its mind about relationships and family, about men and women, about fulfillment and contentment. It meshes people of different cultures – Swedes Tomas and Ebba converse with Americans, Brits, the French and others – to dissect these generationally-differing and universally-existent ideas. On paper, Force Majeure is abstract and odd and idea-heavy – and in execution, it remains so. But through Östlund’s vision, it’s also bracingly funny, pointedly authentic and frequently fascinating.

Our dramatic catalyst is a literal avalanche. Eating lunch on the balcony, overlooking a towering, awe-inspiring mountainous landscape, a boom sends Ebba and her children into a panic. Tomas, unfazed, takes out his iPhone to film, laughing and reassuring – he’s playing that very masculine, typically patriarchal role. But the snow keeps coming, faster, louder, seemingly uncontrollably. His camera shakes, the crowd runs and screams, and a cloud of snow – through which no one, including the audience, can see – takes over.

Östlund, methodically and excruciatingly slowly, fades back in, with Ebba holding her two children. Tomas, most un-heroically slumps back into frame – he had run away, abandoning his family in a potentially fatal moment. This is where Force Majeure gets its start – that Tomas could, firstly, do such a thing, but then more to Östlund’s point, refuse to admit it.

That initial question is raised as Tomas and Ebba recount the event to other resort guests: what would you do? And while it’s an important question the many characters in Tomas and Ebba’s orbit consider, it’s a deliberately distracting inquiry. Really, truly, Ebba cannot fathom or accept her husband’s inability to admit to what he did, while Tomas cannot comprehend why Ebba sees it the way that she does – though, eventually, his iPhone video proves her completely correct.

So what is Force Majeure, then? Answering that question requires precise and full understanding of our initial introduction to Tomas and Ebba. This is a film very concerned with accurately depicting “the way we live now” – our habits with technology, in conversation, in ideas – and that’s no isolated detail. It’s intrinsic to Östlund’s intent. Two people stuck in a way of life that is very much of the past are thrust into a position where they must look at each other and their life, and also themselves – contemporary people living an old-world lifestyle.

Östlund, who also wrote the script, situates his characters with unusual frequency in conversation and in argument. This is where they reveal and conceal themselves, where they learn and where they repress. He possesses the ability to reveal remarkable depth of character in a line of dialogue, in a single laugh, in a momentary glance. And as Force Majeure continues on, Ebba’s innate curiosity in lifestyles other than hers demonstrates the intelligence and modernity of a woman that has succumbed to a lifestyle that is, frankly, beneath her. Tomas’ false “perspective” reveals a crisis of masculinity that cannot be helped or overcome, much as he so wishes.

In a sense, the overriding argument here is that such a lifestyle doesn’t quite work anymore. Ebba’s unending anger and frustration with her husband is misdirected: as she recounts the story with tears streaming down her face, the subtext is “this is who I married.” She’s principally disappointed in her husband’s reaction, and he’s subsequently disgusted with himself. But there’s a greater idea that seeps into the film’s core: is there any lifestyle that’s just right, that strikes that perfect balance? The characters of Force Majeure are all projecting, looking at others as a way of sadly identifying their own issues.

The two eventually connect with the much-younger Fanni (Fanni Metelius) and her older boyfriend, Mats (Kristofer Hivju); temporarily, the focus shifts to them. They’re asking each other, after hearing that infamous avalanche story: what would you do? Fanni tells Mats he’d do exactly as Tomas – run without thinking after staying calm for a moment too long. He’s offended, and she explains, this isn’t about men and women: it’s about being of an older generation. “People from my generation would stay with their children,” Fanni explains. Mats’ retort is critical: “I take care of my family – I make sure they are taken care of.” This is a movie flooded with such innocent lines that demand attention, that speak to the attitudinal differences between men and women, old and young.

Force Majeure is greatly concerned with generational relationships to parenthood, to love, and to ideas of gender. Ebba and Tomas (and Mats, for that matter) are stuck in a kind of limbo, introduced to modern ideas but still internally mired by what their parents instilled in them, by the world they grew up in. Mats loves his children, but as Fanni reminds, they left him, along with his wife. There’s a masculinity-driven distance that deters closeness in husband-wife and father-children relationships – a distance that shrinks, generation by generation.

But for all this conversation about what Force Majeure is about and what it’s trying to say, the method of its madness is what makes it so special. It perfectly – I mean perfectly – captures the way we hold onto such insignificant details and can’t let them go, and takes it a step further by exploring why. Why can’t Ebba let it go, that her husband can’t admit something she knows to be true? And why won’t Mats let that comment from Fanni go? There are greater truths the characters in Force Majeure internalize by wholly focusing on random statements and insignificant moments. But this is human nature, rarely explored but nailed down with great naturalism by Östlund.

Östlund also goes much deeper than expected. While he often slyly plays the crises of middle age and masculinity for laughs, his most poignant and powerful drama is mined from the work he does with Ebba and Tomas’ children. They are haunted and confused by their parents’ fighting. The boy cries to his father, “I’m scared you’re going to divorce.” There’s a perceptiveness and fear in these kids that Östlund handles with great sensitivity and, again, authenticity. It feels real. It’s an honest and bone-deep discussion about the complexities and contradictions that come with creating a family unit, and with removing its artifice.

That idea is rendered visually with astonishing beauty and expansiveness. When it’s time for Tomas, Ebba et al to go skiing, they’re deep in the mountains, where all one can see is white. It’s dreamlike, isolated to the point where it looks and feels like an oblivion. Here, they are surrounded by absolutely nothing but each other, and as they ski down the mountains, it’s into the unknown, into the grey, into the depths of the oblivion. It’s wondrously scenic, but also reflective of these characters’ inability to change, and to only drive further into the isolated middle ground they are entrenched in.

The score is understated aside from intermittent, loud bursts of anticipation. Only, in Force Majeure, that moment of reckoning, that cataclysmic event that the music keeps hinting at almost satirically, never comes. The avalanche affects no one. Ebba cannot really understand the open sexual relationship of another woman; she’s just curious and just enlightened enough, but on the other hand, she’s not. Tomas can have an epic meltdown – played absurdly and tragically at the same time, a strange balance operated sublimely in Force Majeure – as he realizes his troublesome relationship to fatherhood and husbandry, but he can’t quite subvert it. Up in the mountains, Ebba and Tomas are left to reflect, and as they see themselves in the world more clearly, without any distractions, they are unendingly frustrated. But that’s always where it ends.

Östlund ends his picture with the group of vacationers returning home on a bus. Only, the driver is struggling down the mountain – Ebba again fears for her children, that this man will drive them off the cliff. She orders him to stop, exits in the middle of the Alps with her children, and the rest of the bus is thrown into a panic. Tomas and Mats look at each other in a strange moment of understanding, and softly, reassuringly, they ask everyone to calm down, to relax. For Östlund, this is not a moment where the characters change, where they’ve learned to be better men, more conscientious people. No, this moment is perhaps the film’s funniest: the entire scene is set around how desperately these two men are straining to be what they are not, to project an image we know not to be true. And the final shot, of families and couples, young and old and in-between, walking down the mountain, averting a maybe-maybe-not crisis, is perfect for the majestic Force Majeure. There are a million ways to live and to be, but we co-exist on this one planet. We’re argumentative and identity-conscious, and we possess that tendency to project onto whoever’s walking next to us. And as Ebba and Tomas figure out, there’s really nothing we can do about it.

Grade: A

Nothing but positive things in this space; Andrew has some criticisms here.