Denzel Washington is not confined by Fences

Denzel Washington in Fences

Conventional wisdom has it this year’s Best Actor Oscar has apparently been a lock for such a long time that Casey Affleck could be on the fourth or fifth draft of his acceptance speech by now. That theory however becomes a little less credible following this year’s Screen Actors Guild awards where Affleck surprisingly lost out to Denzel Washington.

Affleck’s portrayal of anger and self-loathing in Manchester by the Sea was beaten by Washington’s tyrannical patriarch in Fences. Given that almost half of the Oscar voters are members of the SAG it would appear to give Washington an edge in the big race, while at the same time pointing out the absurdity of a competitive awards system. These two superb performances are virtual opposites; Affleck is full of quiet fury, Washington is full of bombast and bullying. On the plus side, it is the sort of performance Washington has perhaps needed to give for a while.

At a certain point in their careers I believe actors have the chance to choose whether to be an actor or a star. Washington has been enjoying the fruits of his star phase for a little while now with performances in films like 2 Guns (2013) and The Equaliser (2014) which undoubtedly did his bank balance a lot of good without stretching him overmuch. It’s about time he became an actor again and in Fences he delivers the goods.

August Wilson’s drama is a piece Washington knows well. He and his co-star Viola Davis played these roles in an award-winning 2010 revival of the play. In fact, Washington has all five adult leads from that production reprise their roles in the film version. For me it pays dividends; their familiarity with the roles allows Washington, who also directs, to shoot in long takes giving the actors the luxury of the sort of long performative speeches which are normally missing from film.

In Fences Washington is Troy Maxson, a Pittsburgh garbage man whose dreams are bigger than his life. He had a promising future as a baseball player but this is the 1950s and the post-Robinson diversity of the sport came too late for him. Troy takes out his frustrations in rambling declamations in the back yard in which most of the piece is set. Davis as his wife Rose and Jovan Adepo as his son Cory bear the brunt of his thwarted ambition.

Troy’s frustration is compounded by the fact that they live a relatively comfortable life, but not because of his efforts. Their house has been bought through government compensation for war trauma suffered by his brother Gabriel – a shamefully overlooked performance by Mykelti Williamson.

All things considered Troy is not a nice man and Washington never tries to make him nice. There are no nods to the audience to say ‘Look, it’s me, Denzel’. He is unrepentant and unredeemable and Washington plays him that way. Similarly, Davis gets to play Rose as her own woman, there is no long-suffering wifely caricature here.

The original play all takes place in the backyard with Troy’s symbolic fence as a prominent reminder of his incomplete life. Although Wilson also wrote the screenplay it never quite opens out as it should, and there are times when it seems a little like filmed theatre. There is one moment where Troy is taken out of his element – a scene in which he faces a disciplinary hearing – and it sheds an entirely new light on his character. Just once, he looks vulnerable and unsure and I would have liked to have seen a little more of this aspect of his persona.

As a film, Fences is a little less than the sum of its performances but those performances are worth the price of a ticket on their own.

It's hell at Hacksaw Ridge, and that's just the way Mel wants it

Andrew Garfield in action

Mel Gibson is a great one for the mortification of the flesh, whether it’s William Wallace being eviscerated or Christ being scourged and crucified. Perhaps it’s his fundamentalist Roman Catholic upbringing, but there is no doubt that the heroes of his films pay a painful and often bloody price for their redemption.

And when it comes to storytelling Mel plainly has had more than a little of that old time religion. His latest foray behind the camera, Hacksaw Ridge, is an old fashioned war movie that benefits from directorial inventiveness and modern technology to create a film which is brutally effective in communicating the horrors of war and, by extension, the heroism of its main character.

The film combines Gibson’s two favourite themes – religion and violence – in the remarkable true story of Desmond Doss, played by Andrew Garfield, a young Seventh Day Adventist who shuns violence but wants to do his patriotic duty in World War 2. His religious convictions will not allow him to carry a weapon and Doss has to successfully petition a tribunal for the right ‘to go unarmed into the hell of combat’. Having won that right, Doss serves as a medic at the Battle of Okinawa and in one night of staggering heroism saves the lives of 75 men.

The opening scene gives us a taste of what is in store as we find ourselves in the hi-def hell of Gibson’s War in the Pacific. In real life apparently it was an outback farm but with superb production design, terrific cinematography, and judicious FX tiling it becomes a convincing killing ground. This opening is one of three lengthy combat scenes in the film and, apart from raising the bar set by Saving Private Ryan (1998) for graphic realism, they contextualise Doss’s story. Right from the start we know what is in store for him which makes us appreciate his heroism all the more. Gibson also takes the time to introduce us to the other soldiers which gives us an emotional stake that sharpens our interest in the combat scenes

It is to Gibson’s credit that the story remains true to Doss’s principles; normally in films like these there is a moment where the hero has to pick up a gun – Sergeant York (1941) comes to mind – but not here. In fact the film apparently tones down Doss’s heroics. The real story contains many more incidents and, had they included them, the result would have made Captain America look like a slacker.

As it happened I saw this film on the same day that I saw Silence (2016) and although I felt Garfield was miscast by Scorsese, he is perfect in this film and deserves his Oscar nomination. He brings an inner steel to Doss’s character which allows Gibson to avoid too many clichés.

The performances are generally very good, especially Hugo Weaving as Doss’s father, himself a veteran of the First War. To be fair his intervention in his son’s tribunal is one of the film’s cheesier missteps but Weaving brings depth to what could have been a caricature. Similarly Vince Vaughan, for whom I’ve not had much time as a leading man, suggests he may have a future as a character actor.

In the end, the success of Hacksaw Ridge is down to the conviction and commitment of both Garfield and Gibson. There’s an old screenwriting maxim which says that action defines character and that’s exactly what Gibson and Garfield do here and the results are surprisingly effective.

Oh, Jackie...

Natalie Portman in Jackie

If I may be allowed to namedrop for a moment I once interviewed Gary Oldman when he was in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and the conversation turned, as it did in almost every interview he did for the movie, about the make-up that was required to make him look like a 400-year-old man.

It did awful things to his skin apparently with terrible rashes and his eyes were constantly sore from the hard, coloured contact lenses he was required to wear. But there was one constant that he kept in mind through all this. ‘It’s really important to make sure that you wear the make-up and that the make-up doesn’t wear you’.

And that, by a circuitous route, is what’s wrong with Jackie. This is a film about Jacqueline Kennedy, played by Natalie Portman, in those days towards the end of November 1963 between the assassination of her husband, US President John F Kennedy, and his funeral. It was a time when Mrs Kennedy became tragically iconic because of the outfit she wore on the ill-fated motorcade and afterwards. It was a pink Chanel suit and she became forever identified with it.

Much of Jackie is about that suit, especially in its blood-spattered phase, but the problem is that, to go back to Gary Oldman, the suit wears Portman and not the other way round. This film, by Chilean director Pablo Larrain, is an homage not to Jacqueline Bouvier, or Jackie Kennedy, or Jacqueline Onassis. It’s really all about that suit in a series of scenes that almost fetishize its significance.

It’s not a film about a person, it’s a film about a media construct. Portman forsakes characterisation for impersonation. She holds herself still and inert – like FLOTUS Barbie – and gets the accent spot on, including that fetching little speech impediment. But so much effort goes into the physicality and vocality of the role there is no room for performance. Portman isn’t a character but a simulacrum of a tragic figure.

Larrain constructs his film like a series of tableaux vivants around key scenes in Dallas and its aftermath. None of this makes for very smooth viewing.

Jackie’s painfully awkward telecast in which she invites the American public on a tour of the White House is reconstructed in all of its cringe-making detail. It’s hard to bear in mind that these are the first steps along the road that ultimately gave us the ultimate media-savvy power couple in the Obamas.

But the strangest aspect of the film is a clunky framing device in which a journalist (Billy Crudup) interviews the former First Lady about the great events. Presumably Crudup is supposed to be Theodore White who was apparently JFK’s favourite journalist, but not even someone as familiar as White may have been would have turned up to interview the First Widow looking like he’d come from an all-night lock-in? The dialogue in these scenes is unbelievably literal and it makes painful watching.

There’s a relatively stellar supporting cast and the cinematography by Stephane Fontaine is excellent. But, no matter how beautifully the film is shot, each immaculately composed frame takes you further and further away from any sense of understanding this enormously complicated woman.