2008. Starring Daniel Craig, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench. Directed by Marc Forster.
There were so many negative reviews of this, the second movie in the series of reinvented James Bond adventures, that I was not in any kind of hurry to see Quantum of Solace. Even though I loved 2006’s Casino Royale, which introduced us to Daniel Craig’s icy, brutal James Bond, who lacks the winking casualness of past Bonds, and substitutes his bare knuckles for the increasingly goofy devices that drove earlier movies. Casino Royale began its reinvention with a bang — a relentless parkour chase that leaves the viewer out of breath and happy for the change in pace. The film ended — and if you haven’t seen it, I’m sorry — with the death of a romantic conquest that this Bond couldn’t shrug off with a sip of the perfect martini.
That’s what I’ve heard doomed this movie — Bond’s guilt for the death of his new love, and the thirst for vengeance that would lead him off mission. You know, 007 has “lost his smile.” But I went into Quantum of Solace with an open mind, and I loved it. Yes, Daniel Craig rarely smiles, and his Bond can’t seem to trust anyone, but that’s what I expect of an agent. When the trail for vengeance exposes an infiltrator who puts his beloved boss and adversary, M, in danger, Bond lashes out and keeps swinging, bounding from country to country in pursuit of a mysterious group of criminals whose goal he doesn’t yet understand.
One member of the group unlucky to cross paths with Bond is Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric, looking much healthier than he did in The Butterfly and the Diving Bell), a supposed eco-friendly entrepreneur who is much friendlier with totalitarian thugs than tree-huggers. Greene is buying vast regions of desert in South America for a mysterious purpose, and killing off Bond’s fellow agents and undercover friends. Meanwhile, Bond keeps running into Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who is as persistent in her own pursuit of revenge.
The action scenes are great, as always — Bond conducts gun-blazing chases by car, boat and plane, and there’s a rooftop chase that ends in an amazingly tense struggle to the death among scaffolding, ropes and broken glass. Craig’s Bond doesn’t spend much time sipping drinks and chatting up the ladies — he may be the most peripatetic character since Lola of Run Lola Run. I also have to say that Craig looks believably beaten after a scuffle, his face full of scratches and bruises. But those rough angles of his face look at home in a tux as well. His Bond is gloomy and dour and he seems driven by something dark behind his eyes, but it’s just that this angry Bond thirsts more for revenge than a shaken martini.
For my mom, gone from this world six years now. I hope she wakes up with breakfast in bed every morning, and with no worries about her kids.
The Sweetest Gift, A Mother’s Smile (performed by the Blue Sky Boys)
Written by J.B. Coats
One day a mother came to the prison
To see an erring but precious son
She told the warden how much she loved him
It did not matter what he had done
She did not bring to him parole or pardon
She brought no silver, no pomp or style
It was a halo bright sent down from heaven
The sweetest gift, a mother’s smile
Her boy had drifted far from the fireside
Though she had pleaded with him each night
Yet not a word did she ever utter
And though her heart ached, her smile was bright
She left a smile, son, you can remember
She’s gone to heaven from heartache free
The bars around you could never change her
You were her baby and e’er will be
She did not bring to him parole or pardon
She brought no silver, no pomp or style
It was a halo bright sent down from heaven
The sweetest gift, a mother’s smile
Thanks, Mom.
2008. Starring Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross. Directed by Stephen Daldry.
The secrets we keep from each other, with varying degrees of shame, is the theme that seems to run through The Reader, the adaption of the Bernhard Schlink book and last year’s Oscar nomination vehicle for Kate Winslet. It is a sad, quiet story that imagines an intense, brief love between two people neither can handle. Winslet is deserving of the Oscar win, especially for her work in the second act of the movie, but her young co-star nearly outdoes her.
Ralph Fiennes portrays the adult Michael Berg, whom we quickly learn has shallow relationships with women, even a chilly, long-distance relationship with his daughter. Michael is reminded of himself as a younger man (David Kross) — in a very nice transition — who, as a 15-year-old, came down with scarlet fever and was helped initially by a mysterious woman. After recovering, he sets out to thank her, finding the emotionally direct Hanna Schmitz in her threadbare apartment. Before leaving, he glimpses her in a state of undress, and runs out. He’s back soon though, anxious to leave his boyhood behind, and she is once again willing to help him.
Michael’s home is orderly and calm, but stiflingly cold, and escapes again and again to Hanna’s apartment and the warmth of her bed, several times before even knowing her name. And she seems to prefer it that way. Soon she asks him what he’s studying. He reads his lessons to her, then some of the books he has brought, even comic books. He reads to her in the afterglow of their torn-apart bed, then she begins demanding a chapter or two before they get to it. He becomes obsessed with her, and when she realizes how he feels, she breaks off the relationship by simply packing up and moving away without a word.
Michael is destroyed but goes on, a brooding child who has had a bitter taste of adulthood. (Kross really is amazing in this difficult leading role, allowing Michael to age from an impulsive and immature boy to a distrustful, brooding law student.) He ends up in a class led by Bruno Ganz (whom I haven’t seen since Wings of Desire) focused on the trial of several former SS guards responsible for the deaths of Jewish workers killed in a fire. The trial has resulted from the publication of a successful book by a camp survivor. Here, Michael is reunited with Hanna, looking harried and desperate as one of the defendants — one who is increasingly taking the lion’s share of the blame. As the trial progresses, Michael realizes one of the secrets she kept from him, and he is torn by the decision of whether to share it.
I’m not going to share it, or the way the dominoes fall as a result of Michael’s decision. Although the film is bleak and hopeless — you’re either going to watch it or you’re not, so I couldn’t possibly dissuade you — I respect the film for taking the difficult and much-more-interesting route through the rest of the story. Hanna Schmitz is an unlovable character, maybe even an unfeeling monster, but she is unmistakeably human, so much a product of her flaws and environment as Michael is a product of his. And Michael may be the only one to see this. The penultimate scene (the one that takes place in New York) accomplished the near-impossible — I began to feel that victim had treated victimizer unfairly. This is Michael’s challenge, as well.
The grace of the final scene, in a gloomy drizzle, made me hopeful — hopeful that, despite whatever I might do in my bleak, bitter life, others might put off judging me until they’ve read the entire story.
2008. Starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei. Directed by Darren Aronofsky.
The talk leading up to this past Oscar season was that there couldn’t have been a better actor for the role of the washed-up warrior in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler than the once-famous Mickey Rourke. That may be true. But I think that, instead, there could not have been a better way to reintroduce the natural and intuitive acting skill of Mickey Rourke than this role — a role that seems written precisely for him.
Rourke becomes Randy “The Ram” Robinson very seamlessly, and it may be because he looks unlike the Mickey Rourke of Angel Heart and of Diner, the pouting, brooding young Brando (who also made the most of his evolving image) of the 1980s. He does look a lot like the vengeance-driven Marv of Sin City, but I had no idea that he had cost Robert Rodriguez so little in makeup expenses. Rourke is enormously muscular, biceps and pectorals no longer taut, but scarred and heavy. The breaths and groans that emerge from him as he wraps himself before his match don’t seem voluntary, and the winces evoked as he bounces on the mat seem real. So does the pain he feels when he tries to make contact with the people he spends the movie reaching out to.
Robinson finds himself 20 years past his prime, still wrestling on weekends for wads of cash, while working in a supermarket to pay for his tentative trailer home. He spends his off-hours at a strip club, admiring a mature stripper named Cassidy (another revealing role for the brave Marisa Tomei). The two of them have much more in common than either one realizes — both provide a fantasy for their customers, who are oblivious to the pain they are feeling on their respective stages. And both of them are growing too old to be convincing much longer in their roles. Randy reaches out to Cassidy, but her dreams are more condo than trailer. When she lets her guard down, she finds that they are could share more than ’80s nostalgia and a love of Ratt and Guns ‘n’ Roses.
The Ram has a heart attack after a brutal match, and suffers a subsequent re-evaluation of his life. He doubles his efforts at reconciling with his estranged daughter (a chilly Evan Rachel Wood — she looks as if she’s been living in cold storage) and, on the brink of making good on years of neglect and disinterest, gives into bad habits that threaten to derail the happy ending he’s been wishing for.
Aronofsky captures the heartbreak of a dying dream, with The Ram’s struggles to keep his tiny trailer home and the demeaning job in the supermarket. (I love the familiar tracking shot as Rourke plops on his hairnet and walks the the deli backstage to emerge through the plastic curtains and greet the ugly shoppers. Rourke faces it with more dread than the walk out to face his wrestling adversaries.) This simple man, embarrassed by his hearing aid and afraid of the failing wrecks he sees around him, deserves to have someone care for him as his star fades.
I don’t have any enthusiasm for pro wrestling. I guess I figured out long ago that — spoiler alert! — it was fake and not very well faked. (Although a friend’s family took a very young me to see Mad Dog Vachon wrestle in Duluth — when we gathered to ask for autographs, he chased us all away with a demented growling. That was scary.) But it’s clear that the blows in the ring and the crashes to the mat can make for a very painful and debilitating retirement. Another Minnesota wrestling legend, Verne Gagne, now suffering from Alzheimer’s-related conditions, has been in the news for an assault on and related accidental death of a fellow nursing-home resident. The sadness behind that chain of real-life events would be too hard to believe if scripted.
The Wrestler reminds us that life is filled with pain, all kinds of pain. Some you choose, some chooses you. You endure it, because you must. And you are expected to get up and comfort yourself, and expect more of the same as long as you live. You might heal, but you won’t forget the pain.