Polanski escapes to the Cape

A good thriller is very hard to come by. What passes for a thriller now a days seems to be a horror film with a poor plot line where the character just needs to survive. So it is good to see a master director like Roman Polanski try his hand at the genre with The Ghost Writer (2010). Polanski takes a step back and shows filmmakers how to patiently unravel a thriller, even one who's script may not be as good as the filmmaking on display.

I knew this film was going to be good by how it started. It starts on a ferry, the kind you need to drive your vehicle on to get to an island, the island happen to be Martha's Vineyard. The cars are all exiting the ferry, except one. Where is the driver? Well, turns out he is dead, washed up on shore. Now that is how you start a thriller. They could have easily just shown the guy being killed, and it would have been less mysterious, less dramatic.

Following this opening we are introduced to the predecessor of the dead guy, the next Ghost Writer for the former Prime Minister of Britain. This Ghost Writer is played by Ewen McGregor, we never learn his name, in so many words he is a ghost. McGregor is perfectly adequate here as the man with no past and the man we as the audience use to unravel this mystery.

So much of this movie is spent with Polanski channeling Hitchcock. It is more of an exercise in style than in trying to be that plot driven movie, but it works in both aspects. Not as much as say Polanski's Chinatown, which deals with similar themes of political corruption, but I can make the argument than no other movie in the history of cinema works as well as Chinatown.

So far The Ghost Writer is the best movie of the year and I fully expect it to be on my top ten of 2010. It features interesting parallels to Polanski's real life drama, as well as parallels to Tony Blairs life all wrapped in a conspiracy murder mystery. Not to mention another excellent cameo from the great Tom Wilkinson.

****

Davis Discovered

As many movie as I have seen, there are still directors, actors and writers that despite their fame have for some reason or another escaped my gaze. I can now cross Bette Davis off that list of famous starlets that have done so much for the industry yet I have not seen any of their work. Davis was nominated for 11 oscars in her career, winning two, and perhaps should have won for her work in The Little Foxes (1941).

Directed by William Wyler (who in his own right is historically successful and someone else I need to watch more films of) this film is adapted from Lillian Hellman's play and Hellman also penned the screenplay. What I always notice about plays that are successfully transformed into films is how perfect the structure is without being heavy handed. The Little Foxes surrounds a wealthy southern family and the balance between good and evil, greed and morality amongst the family members. Every line in this movies is their for a reason, and everyone represents some theme that later plays into the plot. To do this well is to be a master writer and Hellman seems to me to be a master.

Davis plays the matriarch of the family, her husband is sick and dieing, her brothers need her husbands money for a business venture. Now in the 40's one would think they would play it safe and have their star play the motherly role as a nurturer, but no, Davis brilliantly portrays this women as a greedy, heartless figure who for the sake of money wants her husband to invest in her brothers corrupt business so she can take a percentage. Herbert Marshall plays the husband, he is a generous man, a man ready to do what is right with the time he has left on earth. They have a daughter played a bit over the top by then newcomer, Teresa Wright, who garnered an oscar nomination for this role. Wrights character is naive and innocent and we see she could go either way, down the road of good like her father or inherit the selfishness of her mother.

The Little Foxes not only brings to light the issues of one family but also is a microcosm of America both then and now. Its about the wealthy taking advantage of the poor. Its about those who commit these acts and those who oppose them, and most importantly its about those who do nothing. It is hard not to see this film on a social level, but even ignoring that, the drama of the family dynamic and great performance (especially by Davis) is entertaining enough to call this a very good movie. On top of all that Wylers direction is above average as you can tell he made efforts to use the camera as a device to move the plot forward, rather than always keeping things classically shot. There is one scene in particular where Wyler keeps the camera motionless and lets the drama play out with gripping tension.

Overall this has been a great introduction to Davis, an actress I always just thought of as a classical beauty, and here she really shows her ugly side. Anyone especially interested in writing characters should check out The Little Foxes.

****

Nothing is more exciting than real estate

Guy Ritchie is a director I never really had the admiration for that many of my peers seem to hold. Lately however I want to revisit his earlier work suck as, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. The main reason I want to see these works again is because I think I will have more respect for the filmmaking after seeing his lesser efforts such as Sherlock Holmes and most recently RocknRolla (2008).

Unlike Holmes, RocknRolla incorporates more of Guy Ritchie's signature themes of coincidence, humor, gangsters and deals gone wrong. It is complex, quick and stylized with sharp dialogue. On most all accounts it should be considered up there with his other films, but it seems to fall flat where it most counts, with intrigue. The film never gives itself enough time to breathe and let us get to know these characters and the situations they are in that we don't care what is going on.

It is always fun to watch Tom Wilkinson as a bad guy. It is always nice to watch guys who don't seem to let a thing in the world bother them other than trying to look cool. It is intriguing to see people fight to the death in a unusual manner, but the issue is Ritchie doesn't emphasize any of these moments and because of that they all feel like a throw away. A good example of this is a scene where Gerard Butlers character, named One Two, gets found by two Russian mobsters. We think they are going to kill him right away but instead there is a scene where they tie him to the bed and look like they are about to have some psedo-sexual fun with him before killing him. Ritchie presents this very casually with no time to let it sink in, we know, One Two will not have to go through with this. If you compare this scene to a similar scene in Pulp Fiction where Tarintino allows for the scene to play out, you can understand why one film succeeds and the other doesn't.

RocknRolla is better than his more successful film Sherlock Holmes. However don't go into RocknRolla expecting any of the directors best works. You will be mildly entertained, but Ritchie needs to trust his material enough to let his humor and style play out.

***