Not so much La La Land as Blah Blah Bland

Stone and Gosling perform A Lovely Night

The movie musical is Hollywood’s gift to the world. It is studio film making at its best, the absolute zenith of what some decry peevishly as ‘industrial film making’. The Hollywood studio musical is the perfect marriage of form and comment to create a product which, at its best, is genuinely transcendent.

The studio most associated with the musical is MGM and in the hands of geniuses – and I do not use the word lightly – such as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Vincente Minnelli, Arthur Freed, and Stanley Donen – they elevated the genre to cinematic art. I accept that Astaire’s best work was possibly done in his formative years at RKO but it was MGM that provided a huge canvas to display his incomparable talent.

Films such as Easter Parade (1948), Show Boat (1951), Kiss Me Kate (1953), and, of course, Singin’ in the Rain (1952) were glorious celebrations of song and dance. These were extravagant, vivacious, larger than life experiences guaranteed to lift the gloomiest of spirits. It’s no coincidence that the first golden age of the movie musical emerges at the height of the Great Depression; the joy of the musical provided some communal relief from the misery of the real world.

This lengthy preamble is by way of providing context for my disappointment with La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s attempt to recreate the musical for the modern era. For me, the film is ridiculously overpraised and reminds me of Dr Johnson’s famous quote about dogs walking on their hind legs; it’s not done especially well but it is a miracle that it is done at all.

La La Land is a location musical set against the backdrop of modern Hollywood with a backward glance to the golden era. It’s the story of two young people, Mia (Emma Stone), a wannabe actress, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz musician who wants to follow his dream and open his own musically pure jazz club. The film charts the journey of their relationship as the success they crave threatens to tear them apart.

All of this is done to the accompaniment of, if I’m honest, a fairly modest selection of songs and some unimaginative dance numbers. The big set piece opening number Another Day of Sun sets the tone, it’s an uninspired routine on a gridlocked motorway fly over which for all its efforts lacks the energy and joie de vivre you might expect from  a number like this. Director Damien Chazelle apparently fretted over where this piece should fit in the film and it shows; it doesn’t work where it is and I’m not sure it would work anywhere.

I think part of the problem is that generally we have forgotten how to make movies like this. I’m certain, for example, that there are one or two dancers in this number who can be seen waiting for their cue and looking straight into the camera. We no longer have the grace or elegance that characterised the work of say Stanley Donen or Jacques Demy. I mention Demy because this seems to owe more to his work than it does the big studio musicals.

Chazelle seems to me to be channelling Demy, the narrative structure comes from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and the colour palette from Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967); both magnificent pieces which manage to be inspired by an original while at times surpassing it. La La Land for me doesn’t even come close, it’s a knock-off of a tribute act, at best a second generation copy.

There is a general lack of performance from Stone and Gosling. They are both fine actors but here the people they play are insipid and characterless. This is a musical which, in defiance of convention, actually manages to be smaller than life. No matter how you dress it up they can’t sing or dance so there is no performative voice. I’m not interested in whether or not Gosling learned to play the piano for this film; I’m told he did but don’t necessarily believe it. What I want is for him to look as if he can play the piano and, more important, look as if he’s enjoying it.

The same goes for the dancing. I don’t want to see Emma Stone slip out of heels and into pumps before the start of the dance number, A Lovely Night. For one thing it reminds me I’m watching a movie which I don’t want to happen, and specifically it reminds me that Ginger Rogers did all of this much better while, in her own words, ‘going backwards and in heels’.

Mia and Sebastian are insipid and characterless. Even if Stone and Gosling weren’t so preoccupied with singing and dancing the script gives them nothing to play; the characters, like their singing, are strictly one note. I don’t often do this but to see how you can bring genuine emotion and musical craft to a romantic sequence look at this heartbreaker from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg featuring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo.

In the end La La Land isn’t an especially bad film, it’s just a bit ordinary. We haven’t seen anything like this for a while so we think it’s better than it is, but I can’t see it lingering long in the cinematic annals.

Scorsese's silence speaks volumes

Apostasy is the abandoning or renunciation of a belief, usually religious. It is the key theme of Martin Scorsese’s magnificent if flawed Silence, which is set against the backdrop of the European drive to convert 17^th century Japan to Catholicism.

Japan is persecuting Catholics and the Church is withdrawing its missionaries. Nonetheless Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver) are Jesuit priests who beg to be sent into hostile Japan to find news of their mentor Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson).  

Ferriera, it is alleged, has apostatised; that is, he has renounced his Catholic faith and converted to Buddhism. Rodrigues and Garrpe cannot believe this of their mentor; if his faith is questioned then so by extension is theirs. They ask for permission to go into Japan, in secret, to find Ferriera and, in the process, propagate the faith.

This is a passion project for Scorsese. He has been trying to film Shusaku Endo’s novel for 30 years and has always been able to put it off. In some respects, I might argue that the reason for this is that Scorsese himself is something of an apostate.

His superb early career is benchmarked by a series of films dealing with sin and redemption; even from his breakthrough movie Mean Streets which was categorised by a Jesuit friend of the director as ‘too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday’. This period in his career largely ended with Raging Bull (1980) although there is the obvious outlier in the shape of The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), which was itself about the attraction of apostasy. Since then Scorsese’s films have been good but largely empty; they seemed to be technical exercises in pursuit of an Oscar which eventually came to him for The Departed (2006). There is no doubt that few directors have been more deserving of an Oscar than Scorsese, but it is equally certain that The Departed can’t hold a candle to his earlier, overlooked work. Now with Silence, which was due to be his next film after Last Temptation, Scorsese seems to have rediscovered his faith and with it his passion. For all of its faults there is no denying that this is a heartfelt film and it is rare to see a director of Scorsese’s status create such a personal work.

The film begins with an inkling of Ferreira’s torment as he is forced to watch his fellow priests being scalded to death by the Japanese. Neeson’s eloquently mute response suggests a man at the end of his own particular Via Dolorosa, a man on the edge of the abyss. By contrast Rodrigues and Garrpe are full of certainty and missionary zeal; they are absolute in the truth of their faith because it has never been tested. Once in Japan however they are forced to consider their relationship with their faith, with their devoted flock, and with their God.

Rodrigues constantly asks for signs, as though his belief must be validated like a store loyalty card. The film’s equating of Rodrigues with Christ is a little heavy-handed; if there is a comparison to be made it is surely with the anguished Ferreira rather than the needy Rodrigues. However, there is little response to Rodrigues’s many moments of Gethsemane; he is left to confront the silence of God while, at the same time, Scorsese suggests to the audience, he may actually be encountering the deafness of man. His new parishioners are being martyred and tortured around him but still they refuse to give him up, leaving him to look a little callow and undeserving. The more interesting of the two priests is Garrpe; Rodrigues seems to believe an accommodation can be reached with the Japanese while Garrpe is much more of a liberation theologian. Sadly, Garrpe’s character is underexplored leaving us with a one-note variation on the main theme.

Scorsese’s recent work has been characterised by a visual brio, as in The Aviator (2004) or The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), which has disguised the inherent emptiness of the subject matter. With Silence he has stripped everything back with near-monastic rigour. The dialogue is dry and functional, even in those scenes where Rodrigues is being interrogated by a Japanese overlord and his interpreter – excellent performances by Issei Ogata and Tadanobu Asano. It is only when Ferriera finally reveals the reasons for his apostasy and outlines the fundamental futility of their mission that it bursts into shocking eloquence.

Visually the film is equally spare. There are scenes here that echo Rosselini or Bresson – Pasolini’s Gospel of Matthew (1964) also came to mind - but for all of its minimalism there are moments when the film also stands comparison with the work of another of Scorsese’s heroes, David Lean. Scorsese and his cinematographer Rodrigo Pieto have taken scenes of the most horrific torture and martyrdom and infused them with a beauty which is often deeply moving despite the images. I am thinking especially of the showpiece crucifixion at sea which haunts the viewer long after the film has gone.

Scorsese has been criticised for ignoring the Japanese perspective in this film, but I struggle to see what his options might have been. He is a white, European Catholic in his seventies dealing with a mission ordered by white European Catholics of his age. It seems to me that he is entitled to only look at one side of the story providing he does so with honesty and integrity, which I believe is the case here. He makes the case for theological imperialism fairly well, I think.

Silence, as I said, is not perfect. The casting of the bland Andrew Garfield, for one thing, seems like a misstep to me. But the power of Neeson’s performance and the questions he raises for an attentive viewer mean that for me Silence is the beginning and not the end of a conversation.

The Birth of a Nation is uninspiring stuff

The problem with The Birth of a Nation is not so much what the film is, as what people want it to be. Nate Parker’s film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year just a week after the Academy had released an entirely white list of nominees for the coming Oscars. As the #oscarssowhite campaign built up a head of steam, the reaction to Parker’s film in Park City was just this side of messianic.

It was hailed in similar terms as the 1915 D.W.Griffith epic after which it is provocatively titled. There were claims that we were seeing the birth of a new cinema and critics seemed to be reviewing a movement rather than the film they were seeing. Even in January it was already being predicted as the winner of the 2017 Oscar. Trust me, with films like Fences and Hidden Figures around this will be lucky to be nominated.

In the bidding frenzy that accompanied the Sundance hosannahs, Fox Searchlight ponied up $17.5 million for the distribution rights. To date the film has taken a whisker under $16 million at the US box office so, once publicity and marketing costs are taken into account, that’s a lot of red ink for Fox.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Nate Parker found himself defending historic accounts of sexual assault just before the film was released. On the other hand, if that were among the criteria for acceptance Woody Allen and Roman Polanski would have been ridden out of town on a rail long since rather than continuing to enjoy eminent careers.

The reality is that once you strip away the hype, The Birth of a Nation is a film which is frequently mediocre and at best merely manages to be workmanlike. It really comes across as a heavy-handed hagiography which plays like an episode of Roots but without the quality of performance that mini-series attracted.

The Birth of a Nation is based on a 48-hour slave revolt in Virginia in 1831 which was led by Nat Turner. The historical account is patchy but even allowing for racial bias, the real Turner seems to have been motivated by some sort of religious fervour. In this version our Southern Spartacus has simply had enough.

His skills as a preacher have been used by his down on his luck owner who hires him out to fellow plantation owners to calm down potentially rebellious slaves. Nat appears to have no issues with this. Even the brutal sexual assault of his wife by a gang of slave overseers isn’t enough to tip the scales. Nat finally reaches breaking point when he is beaten by his master for baptising a white man. This is the catalyst for a bloody and ill-judged insurrection which claims hundreds of lives on both sides.

We’re on familiar ground here. This sort of material has been covered by Roots, Amistad, and, most recently, Twelve Years a Slave. Indeed one of the biggest issues I have with The Birth of a Nation is its lack of imagination.

We have all of the standard tropes of the slavery epic ; an antebellum mansion, photogenic willow trees, public whippings, whites who are evil or at least feckless, black characters who are universally noble, and - the icing on the cake – Strange Fruit on the soundtrack. Movie-making doesn’t get much more heavy-handed and obvious than this.

The fault here is plainly Parker’s. He wrote it, produced it, directed it, and stars in it and is out of his depth in almost every aspect. The script sees Turner as morally unambiguous, he is upright and honest and without a single flaw. The direction is reverently pedestrian and completely lacking in flair- it’s less Braveheart and more The Passion of the Christ – and Parker’s acting skills are, to be kind, limited. There is nothing in his career to date to suggest he is up to the challenges of a role like this and it shows.

The Birth of a Nation tries too hard to be important when it should first be concentrating on being worth watching. It doesn’t work as ether cinema or polemic. To be honest if it wasn’t for the Academy’s lack of diversity last year this film would have scarcely merited a second thought, it would have slipped quietly in and out of cinemas and been judged on its limited merits instead of being seen as the standard bearer for a movement it is ill-equipped to lead.