Da 5 Bloods is sadly topical

In the 1930s Warner Brothers became notorious for a series of socially relevant crime movies like The Public Enemy (1931), Dead End (1937) or The Roaring Twenties (1939). Looking back almost a century on, with a gaze devoid of context, we see them now as rattling good thrillers which made stars of the likes of James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.

What we do not often realise is how controversial these films were at the time. They were often billed as being ‘ripped from today’s headlines’ and their stories of street kids, bootleggers, and glamorous gangsters were seen as being reflective of - and a threat to - the social order of Depression-era America.

The same might be said about Spike Lee’s remarkable new film Da 5 Bloods (2020) which is similarly, but much more sadly, relevant to the times in which it is set. Lee is possibly the most political film maker in the industry, and it would be unthinkable for him not to make comment on the Black Lives Matter movement. His last film BlacKkKlansman (2018) was an eloquent condemnation of race and racism in America, especially in its shocking finale, but Da 5 Bloods, for me, goes further.

It’s not just that the film drops on Netflix only days after the death of George Floyd and the global eruption  of protest that followed his killing, its more what Lee’s film has to say about the sad continuum in which this death finds itself.

Da 5 Bloods is set in the present day with four African American former G.I.s returning to Vietnam for the first time since their last tour of duty. Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis) and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr) have come on a sentimental journey. They want to locate the grave of their former squad leader Norman (Chadwick Boseman) and repatriate his remains.

Despite the backslapping, fist-pumping camaraderie and bonhomie it is quickly obvious that they were not the men they once were. Paul has become a Trump-boosting MAGA supporter, Otis has an opioid addiction and a secret Vietnamese daughter, while Eddie and Melvin are also much changed. The spontaneous arrival of Paul’s son David (Jonathan Majors) hints at a greater concern.

The reasons for the trip are not purely sentimental. They also want to recover a load of gold bullion that was ‘lost’ on their watch. The hunt for the treasure very quickly turns this into a very effective updating of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) as they try to get the gold out of the country while being pursued by their double-crossing backers.

It is just possible – but only just if you had been living in a cave – to see Da 5 Bloods as a conventional action movie. A sort of rollicking Over the Hill gang type of story where – unlike The Irishman (2019) – there is no digital jiggery pokery to de-age the stars. They appear as their 21^st century selves in the flashback sequences, possibly because in their minds they are still the same vital, virile young men who went in country.

Spike Lee however is not about to let the audience off the hook so easily. Although he has some fun with aspect ratios that rather makes you want to see this on a big screen, the gadfly in Lee constantly provokes and discomfits. Just as he did in BlacKkKlansman, real life intrudes frequently into the narrative as Lee provides an uncomfortable civics lesson.

This, to my knowledge, is the first serious depiction of the African American perspective on Vietnam. It was touched on in Dead Presidents (1995) by the Hughes brothers, but that was more about the aftermath of the conflict. Lee’s view here is that there is no aftermath. The film is summed up by the Bloods Vietnamese guide (Johnny Nguyen) who says: ‘After you’ve been in a war you understand it never really ends’.

For Spike Lee and the characters in this film there is the sense that Vietnam was a skirmish in a wider war that African Americans have been fighting for more than 200 years and which shows little sign of ending. Delroy Lindo’s performance as a man trying to come to terms with who he was and what he has become is a career-best for a very fine actor, however it is also the dilemma of his generation in microcosm.

The film is far from perfect; it is overlong and in places the story wanders like the Mekong River. But it has raw power and emotion – nowhere more so than in the final twenty minutes – that makes it linger in the memory.

It also confirms that Spike Lee, one of the world’s great filmmakers, is back on top of his game making films that could be ripped from today’s headlines.

Parasite is a surprising but deserving success

Although the quadruple Oscar success of Parasite is well deserved, it is – despite being a superb piece of cinema – still a big surprise. Partly because it is a foreign language film, partly because Bong Joon Ho is – in Hollywood terms – a niche director, but mostly because it strikes so close to home.

Watching the audience at the Dolby Theatre burst into rapturous applause when Jane Fonda announced the win – after an exquisitely timed pause – two questions came to mind. Has this crowd really reached peak wokeness, or has this crowd just not realised what they were watching? I’ll come back to this later.

Parasite is a stiletto-sharp satire on the class structure in South Korea. The Kim family are living a literally subterranean existence barely eking out a living folding pizza boxes, and holding mini celebrations whenever they are able to blag someone’s wifi signal.

By chance the son manages to get himself into the Park family household as a tutor for their teenage daughter. The Parks are members of the elite with more money than sense; theirs is a life of affluence and indolence motivated by trends and the desire for influence.

The boy spies an opportunity. In a series of hilarious set-pieces he inveigles jobs with the Parks for the rest of his family by ousting the incumbent staff. The Kims’ lives are transformed and their future seems bright. Until, that is, the Parks go away for the weekend and the Kims move in.

The gathering clouds of the roiling thunderstorm suggest a dark and sinister shift in mood. Bong has asked reviewers to respect the film’s secrets and who am I to gainsay him.

It is, as I said, a superb film. Beautifully directed, impeccably performed, and the production design is absolutely marvellous in terms of creating two separate but entirely authentic worlds for the two families. It’s a joy from start to finish.

But back to those questions I asked earlier. Was the Academy vote influenced by wokeness and all of the talk of a lack of diversity which peaked during the voting period? Or are Hollywood’s elite really so self-aware that they are in on the joke.

Those Academy voters for the most part are the Parks. A tiny minority blessed with an abundance of good fortune and a desire to tell other people how they should live their lives. They are the ones who live in eight-figure architect-designed homes while employing invisible, disposable people like the Kims to maintain their lifestyle.

A better writer than I – and believe me there are loads – would have a field day with this. It reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s famous essay about the party that conductor Leonard Bernstein threw in the 70s to introduce the Black Panthers to Manhattan’s plutocracy. To ensure there was no racial frisson, according to Wolfe, the Bernsteins only used white servants that night; the people of colour had the night off. That is a bit like what Oscar night felt like.

Maybe I am doing the Hollywood elite a disservice. Maybe they do get that the joke is on them. Maybe they have been in on it all along.

Whatever their motives it is hard to disagree with a very well deserved Oscar win for Parasite, a movie that deserves to go to the top of your must-see list.

I definitely want Tom Hanks to be my neighbour

The famous acting coach Sandy Meisner is  credited with first coming up with often-quoted saying that ‘acting is reacting’. What Meisner is suggesting is that actors should be active listeners during a performance and there is no better listener than Tom Hanks.

At the start of A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, Hanks gives a performance of almost Zen-like concentration as Fred Rogers, beloved host of Mr Rogers Neighbourhood which for years was one of America’s favourite TV shows.

If you don’t know who Fred Rogers was I would strongly recommend the documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbour, which is currently on Netflix. Suffice to say that for hundreds of thousands of Americans from the late 1960s to the turn of the millennium Mr Rogers was their surrogate friend, counsellor, parent, and someone they could turn to.

Often when you are dealing with biopics what you end up with is very good impersonation or imitation like Jamie Foxx in Ray (2004) or Renee Zellweger in Judy (2019). Hanks goes beyond that in this film; in one of the best performances of a distinguished career he inhabits Mr Rogers. The opening sequence is almost a note-perfect channelling of the famous host,

We get the chance to see this because he is not the subject of the film. The film is based on a famous Esquire magazine article on Rogers by interviewer and feature writer Tom Junod. He went into the assignment sceptical about Rogers’s inherent goodness but, as the article makes clear, he became a convert. It’s an extraordinary read.

In the film Junod is fictionalised as Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) a cynical and conflicted journalist who is given the Rogers assignment almost as a punishment. A new father himself Vogel is beset by troubles not least his workaholism and his fraught relationship with his own father (Chris Cooper) who has just re-appeared on the scene.

Vogel is sceptical to the point of outright opposition to Fred Rogers but as their lives entwine he becomes aware that maybe it is not the holier than thou act that he had assumed. Since he is not at the centre of the story we can watch Fred Rogers on the periphery, reacting for all he’s worth. It’s a remarkable thing to see.

The story is deftly told by Marielle Heller and the quality of the performances, especially from the leads, draws us in without being overly sentimental. In a neat move the production design renders moments from the real world as if they were in Rogers world, thus immersing the audience more and more into the story.

The potential for schmaltz is high, especially in what is ostensibly a feelgood finale. However this is undone by an enigmatic final shot which hints at hidden depths and gives the ending of the film an unexpected emotional weight.

Hanks is Oscar-nominated for his performance, his first nomination in 20 years remarkably, in the most competitive Best Supporting Actor race for years. No one would grudge the statuette going to Brad Pitt, as expected, but for my money Oscar should be going home with Hanks.

Bombshell doesn't pack enough of a punch

The Me Too movement gets The Big Short treatment in Bombshell; a film which manages the difficult feat of raising an important subject while at the same time not giving it the attention it deserves.

The two films share a scriptwriter in Charles Randolph who in The Big Short (2015) gave us a Coles Notes version of the financial crash and in Bombshell does the same for the pre-Weinstein era. It covers a lot of ground but possibly at too much of a gallop.

The subject is Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) the head of Fox News who ran a years-long regime based on bullying, intimidation and sexual predation. The exemplar here is Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), a composite fictional character used to illustrate his worst excesses in some truly cringe-making moments. Eventually Ailes was undone by two of his real-life on-air stars Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman). 

The performances throughout are excellent, even if Theron and Kidman have to act behind a lot of latex. There is no denying the bravery of Kelly and Carlson, or the humiliation that the women who Robbie’s character is based on. But at the same time it feels like this is all done in a bit of a rush. The story feels breathless and a little superficial. There are times when it could engage with the material a little more.

Bombshell gives the impression that it was all down to the toad-like Ailes but fish stinks from the head. He created a culture of malice and toxicity over decades. There are others who were involved who get a free pass in this film because, I suspect, it wants to tell a story without attracting too much attention from my learned friends. Ailes is dead now so he’s not going to sue but you can’t be sure about the others.

The story is told much better in the HBO miniseries The Loudest Voice (2019) which puts Ailes – played superbly by Russel Crowe – into context and, thanks to some heavy legal checking, also holds others to account.

Bombshell is very good but it’s an amuse bouche, The Loudest Voice is the a la carte menu which deserves to be savoured.

1917 is a triumphant exercise in pure movie-making

1917 is a film that totally reimagines the First World War in cinematic terms and the results are spectacular. It is a completely immersive cinematic experience that will, at times, make you catch your breath with astonishment.

Full disclosure. This film was co-written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns who was a student of mine for two years. I am of course immensely proud of her but that friendship has not influenced this review.

She and director Sam Mendes have crafted a script that encourages us to see a familiar conflict through entirely different eyes, it is a fresh perspective on a genre that has become calcified with clichés.

Whether it is All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Shoulder Arms (1918), or the most recent version of Journey’s End (2018) , World War One movies operate within a specific set of tropes mostly involving waterlogged trenches, traumatised soldiers, uncaring officers, and suicidal attacks. With 1917 we get, for the first time on screen, a more accurate vision of the conflict.

This was a war of grinding attrition. The troops spent as much time away from the front as they did on the firing line so there was a lot of down time. It was a war of tedious longeurs punctuated by relatively brief episodes of nerve-jangling fighting. They had to make a life for themselves in this nightmare scenario and the film does a very good job of normalising the hellscape. There are the usual decomposing bodies and shell craters and sudden death but none of this is overly dwelt on. Instead the film focuses on the impact this has had on the soldiers and how they cope with this abnormal new normal.

The story is simple. It is a basic ticking clock scenario. A regiment of British soldiers is about to launch an attack believing the Germans have retreated. In fact new intelligence indicates the Germans have merely withdrawn and regrouped and the regiment is now heading into a trap.

Two soldiers, Lance-Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance-Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), are ordered to deliver a message to the commanding officer to call off the attack and save the regiment. As an added incentive, one of the lives that might be saved is Blake’s brother. They have sixteen hours to complete the hazardous mission and rescue their comrades.

There is not a frame of film wasted in their pursuit of the mission. Much has been made of Roger Deakins’ cinematography and rightly so; this might be his finest work. Mendes wanted the film to appear as if it was done in a single shot. This means that in the opening scene he pulls back on Schofield and Blake and they take us through this nightmare. The novelty fades quickly and you stop waiting for the cut that isn’t coming and concentrate on the story. The film is so skilfully shot and directed that it replicates the classic Hollywood dictum that the audience should never be aware that they are watching a film. Here, Deakins’ camera and Lee Smith’s editing create a uniquely immersive cinematic experience.

1917 also has something we seldom see in this kind of film; space. The frame is wide and the images expansive as we take what might, in different circumstances, be a walk in the country with Schofield and Blake. The war is something happening around them not to them, beautifully indicated by plumes of smoke on the horizon and the drone of a distant dogfight.

We also get the chance to know them as men and not as soldiers. Despite the war being three years old Blake is still idealistic, there’s still a touch of death or glory about him. He envies the fact that Schofield has a medal. Schofield on the other hand is much more complex. He hates the war but he doesn’t want leave; he loves his family so much that he can’t bear to go home and see them for fear he may never return. They are both fascinating characters and our engagement and involvement with them makes us care so much more about what happens to them.

Chapman and MacKay are excellent and bring a compelling script to life. Their journey is punctuated by brief cameos from a sterling group of British actors. These include Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott, and others. They are all fine but the slightly haunted portrayal of a war weary officer by Mark Strong is the one that sticks in the mind longest.

Mendes direction is flawless. His single-take approach is undoubtedly a rod for his own back but he carries the weight well. The story is immaculately paced, Mendes never allows us to lose sight of the mission. In allowing the most emotive part of the film to effectively happen off screen Mendes takes a big chance but, like everything else, it pays off superbly. This is highly ambitious, risk-taking direction.

For all that there was one scene which nagged at me. Towards the end of the film, the mission almost complete, Schofield encounters a young Frenchwoman and an abandoned baby. My first thought was, no matter how welcome the respite, that the scene was unearned sentiment. After some reflection however it emerges instead, for me, as a pivotal moment.

This is Schofield’s Gethsemane. The family man could linger just a little longer with this faux-family, the mission is almost doomed to fail so why not just stay? But he realises that, to be biblical, this cup cannot pass and he must drink it. For the sake of his comrades he must go on.

It is a marvellous moment in a film that is by turns moving, exciting, thrilling, suspenseful and never less than completely involving. In some senses 1917 is a film that evokes the mood of the war poets such as Sassoon or Owen or Brooke. As Owen put it in his Anthem for Doomed Youth

‘Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.’

Mendes and his cast and crew have taken those words and wrought them superbly as images in this magnificent film.

Jojo Rabbit is a dark delight

I appreciate that it is the job of the marketing department to get people in to see a movie but sometimes they are a little, shall we say, overzealous. There is anecdotal evidence of audience members walking out of the otherwise excellent Uncut Gems because it’s not the type of Adam Sandler movie they’re used to. For what it’s worth I think that alone is a compelling reason to see Uncut Gems.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Jojo Rabbit has similar misfortune. The trailer sells the movie as an outrageously wacky wartime romp in which a naïve member of the Hitler youth has Adolf Hitler as his imaginary friend. That would actually work for me as a movie - I loved The Producers (1967) - but there is more to Jojo Rabbit than this.

Taika Waititi’s film deals with much bigger things. It’s about the rise of populism, it’s about the trials of adolescence, it’s about tragedy and loss – common themes in his films – it’s about survival, and most of all it’s about the things we do for love.

And as well as all of this there is the wacky stuff with Waititi as Hitler. In passing there can be no more powerful argument for diversity than having a Polynesian Jew playing the Fuhrer. Also, the film is not really about Hitler per se, it is more about the slavish adoption of a dubious philosophy.

Set in Austria in the last days of the Second World War, when the Germans were relying on children and pensioners to defend the Fatherland, our hero Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) is anxious to do his bit. Jojo is not a natural warrior but he is spurred on by his imaginary Fuhrer friend (Taika Waititi).

A training accident further limits Jojo and his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) insists that, in reparation, local militia commander Klenzendorff (Sam Rockwell) find Jojo something to do at HQ. Rosie disappears from time to time leaving Jojo to fend for himself but one day, mooching around the house, he discovers Rosie’s secret; she is harbouring a Jew.

Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) has been hiding in the attic for months. Jojo’s friend Hitler has encouraged him to believe that Jews are nature’s monsters, but Elsa looks alright. As they talk more and more Jojo trusts his imaginary friend less and less. But with the Gestapo at the door what is Jojo to do?

Waititi’s film works on a number of levels. At its most superficial it is a very entertaining comedy drama about a difficult subject. But there is much more going on here and you don’t have to dig very deep to find yourself being asked some awkward questions. Aren’t we all a little like Jojo these days having our prejudices confirmed by our imaginary friends on the internet without asking too many questions? What would we do if we were really forced to come face to face with those prejudices?

Waititi does not avoid any of the big issues. Anyone who knows his work knows that death is an ever present. As in his other films, such as The Hunt for the Wildereople (2016), it arrives here suddenly, unexpectedly and its impact is utterly devastating. It is a game changer and it is a scene that defines the movie.

The performances throughout the film are remarkable. Davis and McKenzie are superb as Jojo and Elsa, and Johansson gives a career best performance as Rosie. I know her role in Marriage Story (2019) is the one everyone is talking about but for me this is the better turn.  Waititi hits the right shade of Machiavellian camp as Hitler, and there is excellent support from Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, Stephen Merchant and a movie-stealing debut from Archie Yates as Jojo’s only – real life – friend.

The sincerity of the performances, the subtlety of Waititi’s direction, and the slyness of the screenplay all combine for an ending which is not only bittersweet but gloriously triumphant. Definitely a film not to miss.