The Fighter (2010) – Boxing and Skewed Family Dynamics

Article first published as Movie Review: The Fighter – Boxing And Skewed Family Dynamics on Blogcritics.

The Fighter (2010) is a boxing movie. That means you will be seeing some blood and some violence and some rope jumping and sparring. The more unexpected parts of this is probably the fact that so much time is spent on the family dynamics between the lead character Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his seven sisters, his manager/mother Alice (Melissa Leo) and his drug-addled trainer/brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). The relationship between Micky and Dicky is fascinating, to say the least. Based on the true story of the welterweight fighter Micky Ward’s life, this is a story more about overcoming difficult circumstance and seeing at which point loyalty stops being admirable and starts becoming a burden.

Dicky Eklund squandered his potential as a boxer through hard living and drugs. As we enter the story we are shown how Micky and Dicky walk down the streets of Lowell, Massachusetts, where they are obviously well-known. They are being trailed by a camera crew that Dicky insists is there to show his come-back to boxing, when in reality the cameras are there to capture the life of a crack addict for HBO. The documentary exists, by the way. It’s called “High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell” (1995). The brothers are treated like local legends, like kings of the street. There’s a little mockery thrown in there, but it’s mostly good natured. Dicky, for all of how much he brags about once knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard, is more infamous than famous at this point.

Micky’s career is handled by his mother and that’s interesting for a lot of reasons, and there’s something there that subtly hints at a family dynamic of epic Classical Greek tragedy proportions. The fact that Micky loses several of the fights we are shown early in the movie due to bad decisions made by Micky’s mother and brother lead up to the inevitable break from the family. Dicky, meanwhile, gets into more trouble than he can handle when he tries to raise money for Micky to be able to train full time. Being that Dicky’s logic circuits are more than a little impaired due to all the crack he’s smoking, he goes about all that backwards, exhorting money and getting into a fight with the police that actually lands him in jail.

Micky meets the bartender Charlene (Amy Adams) and she points out that the management Micky’s been under doesn’t seem to be doing him any favours. At this point Dicky is in jail doing time for various misdemeanours and Micky actually listens to those around him who tell him it might be time for him to distance himself a little from his family to further his career. Eventually Dicky does come out of prison, clean and sober, and he gets involved in Micky’s training again, basically because Micky wants him to.

The actual boxing scenes are shot with the TV-cameras used at the time and that does give them some extra authenticity, this is a cinematic language you understand, if you’ve ever watched boxing. And, unlike other boxing movies, this has a sense of realism to it in little things, like the fact that you can actually knock your opponent out with a body shot. Also, the level of punishment Micky Ward takes in any given fight is astounding, to say the least. And true to life, which is what makes this worth my while. Any victory Micky has is eked out the hard way.

There is plenty of character driven humour in this, which is not all that surprising given the family the movie deals with. The seven sisters who line up and glare disapprovingly at Micky’s new girlfriend, the fact that Dicky thinks he can escape his mother’s notice by throwing himself out of the same second story window of the crack house where he hangs out, the poor harassed father Jack Ward (Jack McGee) who has to wrangle all those women… they all provide moments of some much needed levity, but you won’t end up laughing at them. The comedy is more subtle than that.

Christian Bale is the obvious scene-stealer here. He is doing a truly awesome job with a character that could easily have been simply annoying. You find yourself liking Dicky, sometimes despite himself. Mark Wahlberg’s Micky is the perfect foil for Dicky’s extreme extrovert. Where Dicky is loud, Micky is quiet and restrained. Other reviews make a huge point of Bale’s transformation, but overlook the fact that Wahlberg is thoroughly believable as a professional boxer, and a rightey, at that, when Wahlberg himself is a southpaw. He carries himself like a boxer in an out of the ring, which is no small feat.

What stays with you when you leave the theatre is the Ward/Eklund family and the excellent portrayals of the dynamic and the visceral quality of the actual fights as well as the warmth and humour that bleeds through the actions of the main characters. It is well worth watching for anyone who is the least bit interested in boxing and who doesn’t mind rooting for the underdog.

The Fighter (2010) directed by David O. Russel stars Mark Wahlberg (Micky Ward), Christian Bale (Dicky Eklund), Amy Adams (Charlene Fleming), Melissa Leo (Alice Ward), Mickey O’Keefe (himself), Jack McGee (George Ward), Melissa McMeekin (‘Little Alice’ Eklund), Bianca Hunter (Cathy Eklund), Erica McDermott (Cindy Eklund), Jill Quigg (Donna Eklund Jaynes), Dendrie Taylor (Gail Eklund), Kate B. O’Brien (Phyllis Eklund), Jenna Lamia (Sherri Ward), Frank Renazulli (Sal Lanano), Chanry Sok (Karen) and Caitlin Dwyer (Kasie Ward).

Bully – Disaffected youth for the modern generation

Article first published as Movie Review: Bully – Disaffected Youth for a Modern Generation on Blogcritics.

Bully (2001) directed by Larry Clark stars Brad Renfro (Marty), Nick Stahl (Bobby), Bijou Phillips (Ali), Rachel Miner (Lisa), Michael Pitt (Donny), Leo Fitzpatrick (The Hitman), Kelli Garner (Heather), Daniel Franzese (Cousin Derek), Natalie Paulding (Claudia).

There are a lot of movies that tell “true stories”. I’m not going to go on a rant about the subjectivity of truth and the unreliable nature of the claim to be able to tell a true story at all in the first place. Fiction is always fiction and the truth is always subjective. There is an actual murder behind all this, though, committed in 1993 in Florida. Jim Schutze’s book Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge is supposed to be well researched, something I can’t really make any comments about, having not read the book in question.

The movie isn’t shy about what it wants to convey. The opening sequence tells you basically everything you need to keep in mind for this to make sense. After a glide over the Florida landscape we find ourselves on a closeup of Marty (Brad Renfro) talking dirty over the phone. If you think even for a second that this is something he enjoys the blank and slightly contemptuous look on his face will cure you of that illusion. He stops when his mother calls him to tell him it’s dinner time and his expression changes to one of furtive shame. And that sets the tone.

The bully that gives this movie its title is Bobby (Nick Stahl). The relationship between Bobby and Marty (Brad Renfro) is anything but healthy. Bobby beats and bullies Marty in a way that actually makes your stomach turn. It’s hard to understand why anyone would put up with being treated that way, but at one point Marty says that Bobby’s always been like that, that they’ve known each other practically since they were born. Bobby also tells Marty at several separate occasions that he’s his best friend, as if that excuses everything. It’s a sadistic co-dependent relationship with sexual overtones and it makes a twisted kind of sense in context.

Bobby and Marty meet Ali (Bijou Phillips) and Lisa (Rachel Miner) at the sandwich shop where they work. Marty and Lisa form an actual relationship that quickly becomes very serious. Lisa gets pregnant in what seems like no time at all and she falls head over heels in a very Romeo and Juliet doomed and tragic kind of way. Bobby behaves badly enough that it angers Lisa to the point where she wants to kill him.

A cabal of Marty and Lisa’s friends start planning the killing. These include Ali (Bijou Phillips), Donny (Michael Pitt), Heather (Kelli Garner) and Cousin Derek (Daniel Franzese). They enlist the help of The Hitman (Leo Fitzpatrick) who is supposed to be a real life gangster.

That conversation is down-right painful to watch. As a spectator you know right from the first moment the plan takes rudimentary form that it’s not going to end well for anyone. Still, they manage to kill Bobby and the fall-out is every bit as bad as you might expect.

Each of the participants falls apart in their own way and two of them wind up telling the authorities which leads to all of them being charged with the murder. The final scenes of the movie show the court room and what their respective sentences are.

There are some interesting questions in all this. This is not a story that’s simple to relate to from a moral point of view. When the camera pans out over the parents and families of the kids on the stand you see their shocked and dismayed faces and the tagline for the movie “It’s 4 a.m… do you know where your kids are?” suddenly makes perfect sense.

The main protagonists are young enough that there should be some kind of parental influence on their lives still, but that is sadly lacking the whole way through. These kids live in a reality of their own making, completely unmoored from anything that even vaguely resembles consequences of their actions. They work McJobs and spend the rest of their time drinking, using drugs and having sex. The critique that the director is being gratuitous is probably not entirely fair, seeing as how it’s still shocking that all this is showed so blatantly.

There’s a lot of cultural baggage surrounding the notion that childhood is a time of innocence and preadolescence and adolescence sort of rides on the coat tails of that. But the notion of innocence is more one of wishful thinking and some strange reminiscence from romanticism. This is more The Lord of the Flies than Anne of the Green Gables.

In his dying moments, Bobby is every bit the child, the innocent victim, begging for his life in a broken young boy’s voice. That, and the clumsy slaughter, actually momentarily shifts your sympathy so that you feel sorry for him. He may be a borderline psychopath and a rapist but someone somewhere along the line should have been able to help him before things got this badly out of hand.

The lack of a moral baseline in these kids’ lives is shown throughout in a way that actually gives the director the artistic licence to show nubile naked young bodies the way he chooses to do without it being wholly gratuitous.

The spectator’s gaze is brought into question here. As far as I can tell the imagery isn’t supposed to tittilate. That being said, showing instead of telling will problematize what attitude the viewer is supposed to take to all this.

The young cast gives excellent performances throughout. The way they handle the interaction is believable in a wholly unreal way. The interaction between Marty and Bobby is painful to watch, but then so is the love story between Lisa and Marty. Even the scenes between Bobby and his father have an uncomfortable undertone that can’t be easily categorized. There’s pressure there, but most of it is just inferred.

All in all this is not easy to watch, or comfortable. The sound track adds to the hard base line of it all by blasting rap music, the dialogue is rife with invectives and there’s an undercurrent of alienated apathy to the interactions that is believable enough to be disturbing. This is a good depiction of disaffected youth for a modern generation and no matter how disjointed the telling might feel it’s well worth watching.

Mule

 

I did read the book, of course. Sort of had to after all this hoopla and you’ll find my thoughts on that here: Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge – or, as true as it gets, anyway…

Sid and Nancy – Punk Love, Drugs and Music

Sid and Nancy (1986) directed by Alex Cox stars Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious, Chloe Webb (Nancy Spungen), David Hayman (Malcolm), Andrew Schoefield (John Lyndon), Xander Berkley (Bowery Snax), Perry Benson (Paul), Courtney Love (Gretchen).

The thing about a movie like this that it can’t really go wrong, even if it’s not all it could be. It’s sort of like Backbeat that way. The narrative focuses on the relationship between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. This is recent history, even more so when it was made, so there’s bound to be the requisite bickering about weather or not it’s true to the actual persons depicted in it. It really doesn’t work that way, no matter how much a movie claims to be “based on a true story”. The best you can hope for is a movie that captures something of the essence of things and makes them interesting enough that the viewer can get something out of them.

I saw this one back in the day, and frankly I have no idea what possessed me to see it again now. I must have had a punk moment. It happens.

This is Gary Oldman’s film debut and he is frighteningly good as the out of control Sid. Chloe Webb is equally good as the high-strung Nancy. Everything hinges on that. I remember her whiny, annoying voice from the first time I watched this and it doesn’t get any less irritating with time.

There’s always been controversy around whether or not Sid could even play the bass, but in the context of what they were doing Sid was the embodiment of the punk attitude. What he lacked in skill he made up for in attitude and this movie focuses on that as well, with a rail thin Oldman posturing, prancing and beating up members of the audience.

It is also a good depiction of the gradual decline of Sid and Nancy as they grow increasingly dependent on drugs. Nancy was supposedly the person who introduced Sid to heroin. It is very much a sex, drugs and rock’n’roll movie with a seriously kick ass soundtrack, no matter how bad the music is at times.

There are moments of levity, there’s also big time drama and watching this train wreck of a relationship unfold really puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional. It is a beautiful disaster all the way through. It also has moments of fantasy and surrealism, like the music video like sequence in which Sid performs his version of ‘My Way’ or the final scenes where Nancy comes to fetch Sid in a cab.

The look and feel of the movie has stood the test of time really well, leaving it feeling like a documentary in some ways and a completely fictional piece of Peter Pan-like fantasy in others. I have real issues with that last scene, but it fits the Romeo and Juliet aspect of the thing.

The movie is told in a semi-circular fashion, starting as Sid is arrested for Nancy’s murder in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, so even the viewer who knows nothing about the couple will see that this can only end badly right from the start.

It’s also somehow reassuring to know that Johnny Rotten spews vitriol over this movie whenever he’s asked about it. Reality always trumps fiction, and movies are always fiction, which is a good thing to keep in mind.

Sid Vicious died of an overdose of heroin his mother injected him with after he got out of Riker’s Island Prison on bail waiting to stand trial for Nancy Spungen’s murder. It’s said his mother did this deliberately. Life is stranger than fiction no matter how strange the fiction is and that’s why I recommend this movie.

Mule

“The Aristocrats” – Dissecting the joke and breaking the beep-machine

The Aristocrats (2005) directed by Paul Provenza is actually a documentary of sorts.

There’s a joke. It’s an old Vaudevillian joke that starts with the line “A man walks into a talent agency…” The man himself then proceeds to show the act he’s offering. In the basic premise of the joke the act is a family – mom, dad a couple of kids and a dog. The punch line is “What do you call yourselves? – The Aristocrats”.

It’s a fairly simple joke – but the thing about it is all in the middle. You can tell this joke for about half an hour. The dirtier and nastier it gets, the better. The middle part, the act itself, can be as scatological and as insane as you like. Actually, the worse it gets, the better the joke. Add incest, bestiality and violence and your golden.

So in this documentary we’ve got some of the best known comedians in the business telling versions of this joke and talking about when they heard it first and how it goes and what they’ve done with it and so on and so forth. It gets really, really nasty. Namedropping is almost impossible here, but we’ve got Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, George Carlin, Billy Connolly, Carrie Fisher, Whoopi Goldberg, Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, Bill Maheer, Penn & Teller, Paul Resier, Robin Williams, Drew Carey, Bob Saget and so on and so forth. Did I mention the mime and the ventriloquist? No? well, there are those too.

This is a comedians’ joke. It’s a very in-house thing, like a mental exercise, a meta-joke, if you like.

Me, personally? I understand what it is all about in that slightly twisted intellectual way that is not really conducive to laughter, but that gets you something else when it comes to the nature of things.

Comedy is hard. Being funny in a way that actually manages to make people laugh is not something that should be taken lightly. This is not a funny joke because it is a funny joke, it is like jazz music, a variation on a theme that lets you see the what the artist has to bring to the table. And you have to understand something about the context of all this – the censorship in movies and television have a lot to do with why all these comedians get a little giddy in the telling of this extremely blue joke.

Some of the renditions in this documentary are pretty sickening. Like many documentaries you should probably not have dinner while watching it if you’re sensitive. It’s also the kind of thing that startles a laugh out of you, because you don’t know what else to do with it. It’s about boundaries and limits and how far you can take it, and of course that’s going to be off-putting.

I tend to view a lot of supposed comedy with that automatic distance that you get when you can put stuff together before it happens. Sitcoms spare me the trouble of laughing myself with the canned laughter they supply and most comedies just make me shake my head. I come from a long line of sarcastic snide verbal joking and that means I lean towards the absurd anyway.

For me this documentary serves the purpose of dissecting where the taboo boundaries lie today. In a world of censorship and polite and cute comedy like Friends, or Full House this joke and the telling of it is clearly cathartic, at least for the comedians.

I actually think watching this documentary is a good idea. You learn something about the nature of comedy, censorship – both internalized and societal – and about what makes you laugh as a pure defence mechanism. Then again, I like it when things get complicated, so if you’re looking for just “funny” you should probably stay away from this one.

Mule

Into the Wild

Sean Penn has directed this 2007 movie starring Emile Hirsch as Chris McCandless. His parents Billie and Walt are played by Marcia Gray Harden and William Hurt.

The movie is based on the novel with the same title  written by John Krakauer. On reading the novel I never really speculated on it being made into a movie and now that I have seen the result I find myself wondering why that is. It lends itself well to the different media being set in spectacular nature scenes, filmed on location in the deserts of California, South Dakota, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada and above all Alaska.

The basic premise of the story is that Chris McCandless graduates from Emory University and then decides to go into the wild. Literally. Influenced by Thoreau, no doubt, but also by other literature, music and his family situation he decides that civilised life is overrated and that there is a moral imperative in trying to decide for yourself what you find important for you in your life.

McCandless aims for Alaska. It is the most remote and wild area he can think of and he sets about this very methodically, divesting himself of his property, driving his car until it gets damaged in a flash flood, walking on foot, hiking and hitching rides he works his way across the country.

His odyssey has much to recommend it, he meets nice people along the way and seems to have the ability to woo people, making them help him even if they don’t understand what it is he wants to do. McCandless has an understandable disdain for modern life as being excessive and strange in all that it measures as important.

He is driven by a kind of fervent morality that Penn depicts in part through voice over reading of McCandless diary and through his sister Carine’s  (Jena Malone) letters and reflections. She speaks of her brother with great affection and understanding, but there is a slight recrimination there as well for his lack of concern about the people that care about him. He is on a journey of discovery and as such that is a pretty selfish exploit.

Penn has made a beautiful and thought through movie that moves towards its inevitable conclusion with ruthless determination. McCandless’ story is made all the more poignant because he walks into the wild – and does not walk out again. If you read the novel there is some uncertainty as to whether he succumbs due to lack of preparation or just from a tragic mistake. Penn seems to decide on depicting the whole thing as a tragic mistake and that colours the viewers opinion about what has happened.

Music is used sparingly and the original score is written and performed by Eddie Vedder who’s extraordinary voice suits the mode beautifully. Vedder even won a 2008 Golden Globe Award for the song “Guaranteed”.

Sean Penn is an interesting director. He seems to veer towards the philosophically complex material and manages to get solid performances from the actors. There is a level of involvement that goes beyond just showing up and hitting the marks. The Indian Runner, The Pledge and now this shows that in abundance.

As for the central theme and feel of this movie it leaves a lot to the viewer, which I think is a good thing. The casual rejection of societies nastier sides is interesting as well as the screwed up family dynamic, but it doesn’t really explain anything. And whatever insight McCandless might have made is marred by the fact that he died – so you as a viewer have to decide what that is worth. You also have to decide how much of a pilgrim he was, how much of a saint or a holy man, and how much of a fool. I won’t tell you what to think, and neihter will Mr. Penn.

And that’s the way it should be.

Mule