A Chest of Tea

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cinematographer: Janusz Kamiński

Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Peter Mullan, David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, etc.

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**Spoiler Free, I think**

Spielberg’s War Horse is art.  Based on Michael Morpurgo’s criminally-overlooked young-adult fiction, and inspired by Nick Stafford’s award-winning stage adaptation (West End and Broadway), the Curtis/Hall adapted screenplay is heartfelt with great moments of sincerity.  Yes, a horse and a young man are the main characters.  But if you prejudge this film as a “silly” movie about “a boy and his horse”, then perhaps you won’t grasp its import.  War Horse examines the unyielding bond of friendship, the unfailing courage and strength of brothers in arms, and the human capacity for kindness amidst the savagery of war.  

It is true that not all will appreciate the depths of War Horse, and some will think it’s mawkishly cheesy at times, but few will be able to deny Spielberg and Kamiński’s cinematic achievement.  My regret in viewing this film is that the theater I was at only had digital projection.  Terrible shame.  Apparently, the choice to shoot on actual film stock results in the rustic aesthetics of vintage cinema.  I’d imagine that digitally-reformatting detracts from its intended effect.  Fortunately, one of the many treasures that remains is how the cinematography transforms the landscape into a character of its own.  The sweeping vistas of Devon, with verdant hills, wide-open spaces, and golden sunsets, looks like a pastoral haven untouched by war.  The time in the trenches - white flares, gray skies, black earth - is claustrophobic and suffocating.  The juxtaposition of the idyllic hues of the English countryside against the dark desolation of No Man’s Land mirrors the abrupt awakening for young soldiers to the verity of the First World War.  That’s cinematic poetry.

One criticism: a minor character name Andrew.  Thankfully, he’s only on screen in small increments, and for a cumulative three minutes.  You’ll see.

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**Spoilers below**

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War Horse is Spielberg’s return to emotionally-directed storytelling.  Joey, the eponymous character, is the heart of the film.  Horses are ethereally graceful creatures, and they are incredibly emotive.  The degree of empathy expressed by these beauties (and the way Spielberg & Kamiński captured their emotions) is utterly transporting.  The uncommon bond between humans and non-humans has been a longstanding Spielberg theme (E.T., Close Encounter, A.I.).  The human connection between Joey and Albert is a deep imprint on both characters.  He remembers his friendship with Albert.  And like these preceding Spielberg films, through the non-human characters, we see our own humanity.  From his tranquil youth in Devon to the turbulent years of WWI, Joey encounters and experiences devotion, valor, tenacity, the kindness of strangers, and - just as poignantly written in All Quiet on the Western Front - the loss of innocence in the cruelty of war.  The scene with the windmill blades is a lasting image.

No one could have imagined the toil and destruction on all sides.  The campaign for WWI was supposed to be over by Christmas of that first year.  The First World War is the first war with machine guns, shells, and chemical warfare, and the last war in which calvary was used.  Over 9 million horses (and just as many soldiers) were killed in WWI.  The British calvary charge on a German camp, with its catastrophic aftermath, is one of the most stunning sequences ever on film.  ”Fearless men on fearless horses.”  Their thunderous emergence from a hayfield is a rousing display of chivalry and gallantry, such innocent romanticism.  A superb capture of the attitude of the now-extinguished Edwardian era.  A chilling realization that calvary, much like that fading epoch, has no place in the mechanized world of the industrial revolution.  The charge of an invincible brigade.  A troop of riderless horses.  Beyond illuminating the twilight of the once-powerful British Empire, that calvary charge is a sobering depiction of the senseless brutality of war.  The camera ascends above the battlefield to survey the cost of arrogance and miscalculation.

Though Spielberg has a comfort zone when it comes to battlefields and war, this narrative is not meant as a lesson on WWI nor on the deconstruction of the British class-system.  Rather, it highlights the instinct and struggle to survive.  The horrors of war can be made bearable by the presence of kind strangers and the bond of brothers in arms.  Joey’s childhood brother is Albert, but his wartime brother is Topthorn - a fierce and regal black stallion.  The friendship between Joey and Topthorn sustains them both through much of the war.  Your fellow soldiers will guard and protect you, and at times, will risk their own lives to save yours.  But facing such dangers by oneself makes it all so much more terrifying.  We see this stark contrast for both horses and men.  In another of Spielberg’s best filmed sequences, Joey races down a trench and flies across No Man’s Land in the dark of night, desperately trying to escape the terrors of trench warfare.  He is bewildered, lost, alone.  Spielberg stages and frames this aimless desperation with fear-inducing angles and a near-absence of voices.  The only accompaniment is John Williams’ epic score.

That stunning scene begins with an eerie repetition of notes as we see the desolation of No Man’s Land, then builds with an extended and steady crescendo, passing a canter and into a full-on assault.  The score deftly mutes the desperation to give way to a symphonic triumph as the story approaches the emotional climax of the film.  As Joey flees across the forbidding landscape, the orchestration shifts boldly to a stirring spirit of fearlessness.  ”No Man’s Land” is a seemly arrangement for our primal impulse to survive.  John Williams is known for his classical tradition of 20th century romantics with memorable melodies and full-ensemble fanfare.  The floating flute and strings theme of paradisal Devon (Dartmoor, 1912) is youthful and uplifting.  The disquieting brass which foreshadows the doomed calvary is tempestuous and unbridled; the lone trumpet for Joey - heartbreaking (The Charge and Capture).  And the tender piano solo of the closing shots of the film - a lone silhouette against Spielberg’s gorgeous sunset canvas - is a serenity that you’d only find in the comfort of a loving home.  Williams’ composition for War Horse is more than grand, it is an affecting masterpiece that vividly illustrates the raw emotions of each character.  

War Horse is art on a mural of film.  It is exquisitely rich in details and powerful in its sentiment.  Through the relationships of the characters in each of Joey’s chapters, be it friendship, camaraderie, or family, the film explores our best virtues (compassion and courage), and our worst trait - indifference.  Spielberg has said that most of his films depict the world as he wished it could be, not the world as it is.  War Horse is such an example.  Against the backdrop of war, this is a human narrative about protecting the things that matter most: family and hope.  Joey is an eternally hopeful creature.  His constancy, his friendship with Albert, and Albert’s determination to find Joey and bring him home, are the tokens that exemplify the best of us.  This is a film with captivating imagery, stirring music, and genuine warmth.  War Horse is refined grace and beauty.

Director: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sasha Baron Cohen, etc.

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Ben Sherman told me once that “nostalgia” comes from the Greek words νόστος (nóstos), meaning “returning home”, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning “pain, ache”.

Nostalgia is exactly what Hugo evokes.  A delicate melancholy.  A deep sense of yearning to revisit the place that we ache to go again.  Using the most modern resources of contemporary filmmaking, Scorsese returns us to the early days of cinema.  To the birth of films with the Lumière brothers in 1895; the anniversary of which was just a few days ago.  To the era where film itself was avant-garde.  And, to the life and legacy of Georges Méliès.

This is the first film in a very long time that I did not watch a single trailer nor read a single review prior to sitting down in front of the movie screen.  Other than knowing that it’s Scorsese’s first dabble into 3D, I had no idea what was in stored.  And, for some reason, I had it very firmly in my mind that it’s an animated film.  I won’t say much about the production design because I know I can’t do it justice.  You’ll have to experience its beauty and grandeur for yourself.  My one criticism is the pace of the first two acts of the film.  However, its cinematography and its story are beautiful.  The opening sequence sweeps across Paris on a snowy evening and into Gare Montparnasse, passing the train platforms and travelers (reminiscent of Goodfellas’ innovative Copacabana shot), and rests finally on the small face of a young boy, Hugo Cabret (played by a talented Asa Butterfield).  He’s peering out from behind a clock.  These clocks are his windows to the world - both as the aperture and as the confinement.  He’s a lonely observer of life, rather than a participant.

Life.  Its joys come from the interactions and shared memories with the people whose lives intersect with ours.  Wonderfully written by John Logan, the script is dotted with smart humor amidst the nostalgia.  From the rigid station inspector (played with terrific comedic timing by Sasha Baron Cohen) and his affections for the lovely flower girl (Emily Mortimer), to the woman (Frances de la Tour) with the dachsund and her suitor (Richard Griffiths), Hugo observes a world that lives on without him.  Asa Butterfield (who has just landed the coveted role of Ender Wiggins) is a wonderfully expressive young actor.  His emotions seem genuine, and his reactions are organic and rarely overdone.  Through those soft eyes, one can see the misery of his loneliness, the hope for a place to belong.

Hugo has a talent for fixing broken machines, a talent inherited from his father (an affective cameo by Jude Law) who was a master clockmaker.  Fittingly, Hugo now maintains all the clocks inside the train station.  This is not a source of income since no one knows he’s the custodian of these pieces of timekeeping.  Hugo lives secretly inside the walls of the station.  He steals food to keep from starving.  And he steals parts from a nearby toy shop to repair an automaton left behind by his father.  Into this restoration, Hugo has poured all of his spirit and all the loving memories of his father.

The repair of this mechanical man is the prelude and connection to Hugo’s undertaking at mending another broken man - Georges Méliès himself.  Once a pioneer of movies, he’s now forgotten.  Portrayed with great poignancy and balance by Sir Ben Kingsley, Méliès sits in solitude in his toy shop and endures the passing of time.  Much like the broken automaton, he’s lost his purpose.  His sense of self-worth has withered to an empty shell, the parts within no longer connect.  Films, once the medium that allowed him to dream, have become a source of sadness and regret.  So much so that he prohibits his god-daughter Isabelle from going to the theaters.

Isabelle (the clever and precocious Chloë Grace Moretz) is a well-loved child full of dreams and imagination.  She finds great adventures in another medium that has seen better days - books.  Isabelle and Hugo introduce each other to their own havens.  Eventually, their adventures steer into an exploration into the history of films, and the discovery of Papa Georges’ forgotten past.  The history of films.  Scorsese sweeps us off our feet and whisks us away to the era when cinema is where one goes to dream.  To a time when film editing means literally cutting and gluing frames of actual film negatives.  Special effects are not much more than smokes and mirrors, like the diversions of a stage magician, used sparingly and always with purpose.

Georges Méliès - like Scorsese - was an inventive filmmaker, pushing the boundaries of filmmaking techniques.  His movie could be seen in color (before the invention of color television) because the film was tinted by hand, frame by frame.  To Méliès, and to Scorsese as well, “films have the power to capture dreams”.  That’s what cinema was once.  In one of his most famous works, Le Voyage dans la Lune, Méliès’ iconic image of a rocket into the face of the moon is an exposition of a visionary artist.  I would imagine that most people would not be familiar with the name Georges Méliès, but many would recognize that sketch.  The magic of cinema is his lasting legacy.

But times have changed.  None more evident than in one of the most heartbreaking scenes in recent years, we see the life’s work of a legend being consumed, mutated, and resold to fit the trend of the time.  Movies are now rarely driven by pure imagination.  The smokes and mirrors of CGI are suffocating the originality of the art.  A great tribute to its director, even though Hugo is filmed in 3D, Scorsese used it smartly, infrequently, only as a means to highlight moments in the story, rather than distracts from it.  The same for its music.

Hugo’s score is wonderful.  Imagine if Michael Giacchino’s Parisian, jazzy, lighthearted Ratatouille seasons Howard Shore’s highly emotive styles from LOTR.  The playful melody when Hugo is running from the station inspector and his Doberman.  The wistful notes that float along in the scene with Hugo’s father.  The jovial and boundless accompaniment to the retelling of Papa Georges’ imaginative passion for cinema.  From beginning to end, Howard Shore builds an enchanting atmosphere, a potent companion of nostalgia.

Hugo is more than a film.  Hugo is a vessel, a time machine that transports us back to the moments we ache to find again.  On the surface, this is the story of a young boy who mends the timekeepers of a train station in Paris, whose path intersect with a magician-turned-film legend, and both lives are changed for the better.  But really, this is a journey home, a return to a place where you know you are loved.  For Hugo, for Papa Georges, for Scorsese, and for cinema itself.  Hugo is magical.  Hugo is timeless.

Director: Tomas Alfredson

Cinematographer: Hoyte van Hoytema

Starring: Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, etc.

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“You weren’t followed?”  Dark.  Cold.  Near colourless.  The opening scene sets the film’s tone.  The flawless production design brushed with shades of orange and brown transports us back to the grey skies of Cold War London.  The atmosphere in Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John Le Carré’s masterpiece of espionage literature depicts solitude and evokes tense paranoia.  You’re on your own, and you’re constantly under surveillance.  The quiet soundscape is employed to deftly create great intensity.  Most of the scenes are filmed through windows and panes of glass.  Otherwise, they’re filmed in closed rooms filled with smoke and fear.  The players are often in the open while the camera keeps its distance, then moves to track its targets, as if we’re spying on the characters themselves, who seem, in turn, vulnerable in such exposure.  The film unfolds like pieces of intelligence information being collected: a location here, an identity there, an event is retold; one must decide whether each piece of information is genuine.  The fact that John Le Carré - rather, David Cornwell - was once an officer of MI6 until his position was betrayed by the Soviet mole Kim Philby (part of the Cambridge Five), lends a sense of realism, if not credibility, to his work.  Unlike the high-octane, glamorous, and morally righteous sphere of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, Le Carré’s world of international espionage is languid, quiet, and ambiguous.  

The same words describe George Smiley (Gary Oldman).  Oldman’s Smiley is near invisible, yet completely commands the screen.  The way he sits, how he walks, a slight pause before he speaks, and his voice when he does speak; all are restrained and measured.  In fact, Smiley appears on screen in several different scenes, and it’s nearly 20 minutes into the film before actually uttering three words.  If you follow his eyes, they will hint at something but never betray completely.  Oldman reportedly modeled much of Smiley’s physicality on Le Carré himself.  A man who can interrupt you on the street, and ask for the time, yet you wouldn’t remember him five minutes later.  Oldman brilliantly painted Smiley as perspicacious, stoic, sagacious, and nearly indecipherable.  A man immersed in the tension of the Cold War must remain unemotive, understated, and elusive, as he listens and watches all around him.  Le Carré described Smiley as “out of date, but loyal to his time”.  How true.  And perhaps it is because of his stillness that we strive to notice his slightest motion.  This, in turn, allows Oldman to transpose subtlety into nuanced and layered characterization.

Particularly, in a mesmerizing scene when Smiley and Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) share a drink in a darkly lit room, Smiley describes and relives a chance encounter with his distant Soviet nemesis, Karla, across the table to an empty chair.  Alfredson’s choice to present a monologue in lieu of a flashback pays off dividends as Oldman offers a tour-de-force of acting mastery.  Oldman allows Smiley’s mask to slip just slightly, before regaining composure.  He reveals his sole vulnerability in an otherwise well-constructed armour: his devotion to his often unfaithful wife (who, in a deft directorial choice, is left off-screen).  Smiley knows it’s his weakness, and he knows he unwittingly revealed it to an enemy.  To say that Oldman’s performance is hypnotizing would be an understatement.  Credit must also go to how fantastically  Alfredson/Hoytema shot the scene, frame by frame.  This leads directly into the next memorable scene, with Peter Guillam.

Peter Guillam (Cumberbatch) has been altered slightly from the book, some may say this “personal” change is large, but not I.  Guillam is initially seen as a flirt; he eyes every woman he passes.  Not quite a skirt-chaser, but one could imagine that he can charm any woman, anywhere, anytime.  Looking back, this façade is just so cruel.  In a quietly devastating turn, Cumberbatch’s Guillam demonstrates the personal cost of the men who live their lives in the trade of secrecy and intelligence.  Vulnerability will always be exposed and exploited.  To be in the espionage profession is to live a life of solitude, “in the name of tacit dedication”.  ”Trust no one” and “things aren’t always what they seem” are shields for their armour.  What does that say then about Guillam following Smiley without question, and that Smiley followed Control?

In another change from the book, smartly interwoven with the main narrative is an entirely invented scene - flashbacks to an office Christmas party - reveals much and more about the players in a few fleeting seconds than other lesser films in reams of script.  Unexpectedly, and with great irony, the entire floor joins a Lenin/Santa caricature in a rendition of the Russian national anthem in full merriment; one comes to understand the Circus and its officers.  This is the world of international espionage.  They live and breathe information and misinformation from the Iron Curtain so consumingly that they can regurgitate the lyrics, with near patriotic fervor.

The score by Alberto Iglesias is wonderfully complementary.  It is haunting, lonely, tense.  It is the undercurrent that - very aptly - quietly carries the film from one emotion to the next.  It is incredibly effective in the anxiety-inducing scene when Guillam enters the Circus archives to retrieve information for Smiley.  The score remains in the background but highlights a strong sense of urgency and suspicion.  And in the moments leading to the identification of the mole, the score takes center stage, yet at the revelation, elicit neither shock nor outrage, but merely a sober sense of finality.  There is no pomp and circumstance, no ostentatious ceremony, no gold star is pinned to any jacket.  This is their profession.  Languid, quiet, ambiguous.

Solitude and paranoia.  Perhaps one begets the other.  These men in the intelligence service are lonely creatures with muted lives.  The victories are small, and often muffled.  The losses are swallowed, endured.Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and sacrifice.  It is about what these men choose to safeguard, and what they choose to abandon, and ultimately, what these choices cost them.  Some costs seem almost too high.  Few films can create such precise and compelling mood with so “little”, a fine achievement in subtlety.  Having read the book, I can’t say that the book is better.  Nor can I say that the film is better.  Certainly, the book is more comprehensive, and the characters in the novel are more effusive for Le Carré affords the reader passage into their private thoughts and impulses.  Yet there exists originality in the film amidst the borrowed inspirations from the novel.  This is rare feat.  That’s a testament to its director and its cast.  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is easily one of the best films in recent years.

Director: Gavin O’Connor

Starring: Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte

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Damaged. Anger. Pain. Guilt. Shame. Family.

Warrior is not a fight movie, not at its core.  Don’t get me wrong, the MMA fight sequences are something to behold.  But this is a film about raw emotions, and real pain.  And the greater the pain, the more powerful the catharsis.  This film does not disappoint.  I don’t think anyone could look away for a moment in the final 30 minutes of the film.  It is riveting, pulse-pounding, soul-stirring, and at many moments, heartbreaking.  And in its climax, it is all of the above.  

Tommy Riordan (Tom Hardy) is beautifully vulnerable beneath his silent and seething rage.  Tom Hardy, a versatile and refined character actor, has a rare understanding for the erratic, brooding, complex roles, whose calmness is quickly followed by unrestrained violence (see Bronson).  There’s dark for the sake of being dark - that’s boring.  But there’s something arresting about an anguished, tormented soul, searching for solace.  Hardy’s character is very internal, highly repressed, and maybe - just maybe - too enigmatic.  Then again, maybe that’s the point; maybe he’s not meant to be wholesome because he is a broken man.  Perhaps, he is something like Captain Ahab on his monomaniacal path of vengeance.  Tommy is an unstoppable force, punching his way through, within the cage, and without.  It seems like fighting is the only time Tommy could calm himself - ironically as that sounds.  For those few fleeting seconds inside the cage, Tommy is at peace.  Maybe because while he’s throwing those punches, he doesn’t have to think, he doesn’t have to run, and he doesn’t have to feel.  But as the film progresses, it becomes clear that Tommy didn’t seek out his once-drunken father after 15 years for a payback, or for training.  It was for something else entirely.  The scene in the hotel room… there’s real hope, real love in Tommy, but how do you express that emotion when you’ve never been shown what it’s like, and never known what it means?

Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton) is the other half of the broken brothers, trying to keep his own family (wife and daughters) from falling into dire straits.  He brings heart, substance, urgency, and in doing so, grounds the character in real circumstances.  Joel Edgerton, at moments, steals the scene from Tom Hardy.  Edgerton manages to offer a more complete character: the simple and average man with simple and average troubles in today’s strained economy.  He’s the common man; the underdog who is outmatched in every fight — smaller fists, shorter reach — but you cannot measure the heart of a man.  Brendan is determined to be different than his father, and fights on because he knows he’s accountable to more than just himself.  He, too, resents his father, but dismissively buries their history instead of facing it.  Maybe he is tired of waiting for his father to acknowledge that he matters too.  He also feels contrite about not being there for his younger brother Tommy in their youth.  But how do you repair a bridge that’s been burned years ago, and you stood by and watched it crumble?

Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte in a likely Oscar-nominee performance) is a broken and patched-up man who broke his family, and now desperately trying to mend his sons from their own pain.  The sons are getting punched in the fights, but it is Paddy who takes the real blows.  He has been waiting to pay the debt he owes his sons.  It becomes obvious that Paddy is held intact by a thread in the stitched fabric.  A recovering alcoholic, his guilt and shame is palpable.  The struggle to right a wrong is the theme of the story.  Nick Nolte has reached into his own past to deliver such an authentic display of regret and penitence, probably the performance of his career.  Those eyes - grieving, tearful, near hopeless - the wave of his hand, the turn of his face, the subtleties of a sombre Nick Nolte elevate the film.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know that the brothers face each other in the championship round of Sparta.  They utter very few words, but all that needs to be said is in their fight.  Maybe Tommy fights so he can be held.  Maybe Brendan fights to hold onto something.  Maybe in the current state of war-fatigue, economy-trodden, American daily life, and in the face of undignified inequity, the only thing a man has remaining in his control, is to pummel another man senseless.  As they lay it all out, Tommy unleashes the ultimate expression of those who carry so much pain and inconsolable rage.  Brendan counters with calmness and patience, absorbing the pain.  The polarity of their fighting styles mimics the contrariety of their self-images.  Standing at the edge of a precipice, the two brothers couldn’t be more different.  Yet both have a shared sense of desperation, both seeking for a way back.  What would happen if Captain Ahab had listened to his men’s pleas to turn the ship around and tame his fury?  We all know what happens when a tortured soul is consumed by wrath.  The final fight pushes each of the men’s resolve to its breaking point.

Family is worth fighting for. But Warrior is not merely a fight movie.  It is an earnest witness to the enduring love of family.  It is a study of flawed and compelling characters.  It tells the story of the mournful men seeking redemption, and the damaged souls finding a way to relent.  Gavin O’Connor (Miracle, Pride & Glory) seems to gravitate towards exploring “what it means to be a man”.  Granted, “Boys estranged from their father, working out their issues with their fists” is not an original notion.  Yet this film manages to escape the clichés with some unexpected choices.  Similar to The Fighter (with Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg), fighting is the vessel that carries the unspoken suffering of a family, torn and battered.  But surpassing The Fighter, Warrior manages to touch a deeper level of emotions through powerful performances, stern direction, and poignant music score.  This is a must-see film, and a must-see-again film.