Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 01/04/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Thursday, January 4, 2024

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

Michael Fassbender in The Killer

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Kerry O'Malley, Sophie Charlotte, Emiliana Pernia, Gabriel Polanco, Sala Baker, Monique Ganderton, Daran Norris, Jack Kesy. Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker, based on a graphic novel series by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon. Cinematography: Erik Messerschmidt. Production design: Donald Graham Burt. Film editing: Kirk Baxter. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross.

In essence, The Killer is a routine thriller about a hit man who screws up and then has to undo the consequences of his screwup. But director David Fincher, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, and actor Michael Fassbender make it seem fresh and novel, not by departing from formula but by creating characters and giving them something fresh to say. Fassbender is The Killer (most of the dramatis personae are given labels rather than names), a lean, mean killing machine who rises above that cliché by a variety of quirks, including an addiction to maxims and mottoes that we hear from constantly in voiceover: "Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don't improvise. Trust no one. Never yield to an advantage. Fight only the battle you're paid to fight." Even by itself that constant voiceover could be annoying, except that Fassbender makes it amusing by intoning it in a flat American accent, and by occasionally failing to follow his own advice. Fincher spends a long time on the setup to the first kill, which makes it even more startling when the suspense is broken by the Killer's mistake. There's some swift action as he gets rid of the equipment used in the shoot, then boards a plane (using one of his many passports and credit cards, all carrying fake names borrowed from TV characters) for his home in the Dominican Republic, where he finds that he still has to keep running, eliminating not only those pursuing him, but also everybody else who knows his true identity. These incidents introduce us to a variety of characters, wittily played by, among others, Charles Parnell (The Lawyer, aka Hodges, who is a middle man between The Killer and his targets), Tilda Swinton (The Expert, a fellow assassin who knows his identity), and Arliss Howard (The Client, one of the few people The Killer manages to intimidate but not kill). All of this nonsense -- which is praise, not criticism -- is set to a variety of songs, mostly by the Smiths, whose dark humor perfectly complements the style of the movie. I could quibble about this being one of those films in which the big fight scene takes place in the dark, so you're never quite sure who's beating whom, but then moral ambiguity is the whole point of the movie.

The Great Sinner (Robert Siodmak, 1949)

Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner in The Great Sinner

Cast: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Ethel Barrymore, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorehead. Screenplay: Ladislas Fodor, Christopher Isherwood, René Fülöp-Miller, based on a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Cinematography: George J. Folsey. Art direction: Hans Peters, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Harold F Kress. Music: Bronislau Kaper.

Gregory Peck's handsomeness and charisma made him a movie star, and served him well in films like Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953) and To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962), but he never achieved the gravitas and vulnerability that would have made him a great actor. Unfortunately, both of those characteristics are what was needed to play the Dostoevskyan protagonist of The Great Sinner, loosely based on the novella The Gambler, with borrowings from Crime and Punishment and the author's own life, including his epilepsy and his addiction to gambling. The handsomely mounted production was a prestige project for MGM, but it ran into problems with the script and director Robert Siodmak's reluctance to film it as written. After the first cut, Siodmak was replaced by Mervyn LeRoy, with instructions to make more of the romance between the characters played by Peck and Ava Gardner. The cuts made in the film may explain why the roles played by Agnes Moorehead and Ethel Barrymore seem to be cast more generously than they deserve, considering the time they spend on screen. The "sin" of the title is gambling, of course, but the topic of gambling addiction is perfunctory at best. There are some good lines in the screenplay, such as the casino employee's observation that it's hard to detect patrons who are suicidal: "They smile right before they pull the trigger." And Ava Gardner is, as Peck's character calls her, "irritatingly beautiful." There's no excuse, however, for the swooningly pious climax of the film and the unconvincing happy ending. Best to skip The Great Sinner and watch a better movie about glamorous addicted gamblers, Jacques Demy's Bay of Angels (1963).