Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009)

Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Fergie, Sophia Loren. Screenplay: Michael Tolkin, Anthony Minghella, based on a musical by Arthur Kopit, Maury Yeston, and Mario Fratti and a screenplay by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi. Cinematography: Dion Beebe. Production design: John Myhre. Film editing: Claire Simpson, Wyatt Smith. Music: Andrea Guerra, songs by Maury Yeston.

Federico Fellini's 1963 classic 8 1/2 is a work of self-deprecating wit, in which a director played by Marcello Mastroianni, who was Fellini's cinematic alter ego, tries to launch a new film while at the same time scrutinizing his failures and foibles, most of which have to do with women, including his mother, his wife, his mistresses, and his flings. Any attempt to remake or adapt that film is going to lack its essence: the personality of Fellini himself. On Broadway, the musicalization of the film as Nine substituted performance for personality, using the very slight plot of the movie as a reason to string together songs and production numbers. But by returning the stage production to its original medium, Rob Marshall's Nine not only loses the energy of live performance but also invites comparison of one movie to the other. Nine is essentially a remake, and has to be judged as that. Everyone in Marshall's film works very hard to put it across. As Guido, Daniel Day-Lewis energetically tries to efface the memory of Mastroianni is the tormented director. Penélope Cruz has a sizzling musical number and manages to create a vivid character out of Carla, Guido's mistress. Marion Cotillard sings well and acts beautifully as Guido's wife. And just the presence of Sophia Loren as Guido's mother is enough to cast a spell over the movie. But in the end nothing works, and the film falls flat where 8 1/2 sent moviegoers out of the theater with a sense of exhilaration, of having experienced a director's complete and complex vision. Once, while typing the title of Marshall's movie, I wrote None. Maybe I should have left the typo.   

In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993)

In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993)

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Pete Postlethwaite, Emma Thompson, John Lynch, Mark Sheppard, Don Baker, Corin Redgrave, Beatie Edney, Marie Jones, Daniel Massey, Paterson Joseph, Gerard McSorley. Screenplay: Terry George, Jim Sheridan, based on a book by Gerry Conlon. Cinematography: Peter Biziou. Production design: Caroline Amies. Film editing: Gerry Hambling. Music: Trevor Jones.

Reality doesn't come neatly packaged, so films based on "true stories" always have to lie to us. The trick is not letting the lies get in the way of what truth remains in the story. Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father was attacked for too much fictionalizing, too many departures from the facts, and the best that Sheridan could do was to claim that the film was not so much a story about Gerry Conlon and the Guildford Four -- falsely arrested for terrorism and imprisoned for 15 years until the verdict was overturned -- as it was about "a non-violent parent." And if Sheridan's film had been that, if it had focused more intensely on the relationship between Gerry and Giuseppe Conlon, it would have been a different film entirely. But Sheridan and co-screenwriter Terry George yielded to the temptation to stray into more dramatically conventional territory: the efforts to exonerate the Conlons and the others, and the courtroom showdown that resulted in their release. With the blurring of the facts, the film shifts into melodrama. But it's a very well-acted melodrama. Daniel Day-Lewis resorted to Method techniques -- spending time in jail and speaking with a Belfast accent even off-screen -- to get into Gerry Conlon's mind, and it's a wholly convincing performance, following Conlon from layabout to victim to victor. What there is of the troubled relationship of father and son is beautifully presented in the scenes with Pete Postlethwaite as Giuseppe, and Emma Thompson makes the most of the part of Gareth Peirce, who was not in fact so much the lone heroic defender as the script makes her out to be. In the Name of the Father holds the screen well -- if not as well as it might have if the fictionalizing choices hadn't been so obvious and conventional. 

My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989)

Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Benda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Fiona Shaw, Ruth McCabe, Hugh O'Conor, Cyril Cusack. Screenplay: Shane Connaughton, Jim Sheridan, based on a book by Christy Brown. Cinematography: Jack Conroy. Production design: Austen Spriggs. Film editing: J. Patrick Duffner. Music: Elmer Bernstein.

Daniel Day-Lewis won his first Oscar for My Left Foot, with a tour-de-force performance that almost guaranteed him the award. As Christy Brown, limited by cerebral palsy to the creative and expressive use of only his left foot, he struggles for the kind of acceptance by the outer world that he finds in his large working-class Irish family, finding it finally through painting and writing. It's the kind of film that's usually called "inspiring," but Day-Lewis makes it clear that Brown was something of a handful to deal with -- a human figure, not an object of sentimental concern or pity. It's easy to overlook, in all the attention given to Day-Lewis, the performance of Hugh O'Conor as the young Christy.

My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)

Cast: Gordon Warnecke, Daniel Day-Lewis, Roshan Seth, Saeed Jaffrey, Shirley Anne Field, Rita Wolf, Derrick Branche. Screenplay: Hanif Kureishi. Cinematography: Oliver Stapleton. Production design: Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski. Film editing: Mick Audsley. Music: Stanley Myers, Hans Zimmer.

A fusillade across the bow of Thatcherite Britain, My Beautiful Laundrette manages to take on racism, homophobia, and capitalist entrepreneurship all in one breathtaking moment. It also served as a breakthrough film for Daniel Day-Lewis as Johnny, a gay skinhead with an Anglo-Pakistani lover, Omar (Gordon Warnecke).

There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds, Dillon Freasier, Kevin J. O'Connor. Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, based on a novel by Upton Sinclair. Cinematography: Robert Elswit. Production design: Jack Fisk. Film editing: Dylan Tichenor. Music: Jonny Greenwood.

Extraordinary filmmaking made even more extraordinary by Daniel Day-Lewis's performance, the second of his three Oscar wins. There are some who think the film is a little diffuse and eccentric, especially in its later scenes. But who needs ordinary movies?

Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)

Sally Field and Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln: Daniel Day-Lewis
Mary Todd Lincoln: Sally Field
William Seward: David Strathairn
Robert Lincoln: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
W.N. Bilbo: James Spader
Preston Blair: Hal Holbrook
Thaddeus Stevens: Tommy Lee Jones
Robert Latham: John Hawkes
Alexander Stephens: Jackie Earle Haley
Edwin Stanton: Bruce McGill
Richard Schell: Tim Blake Nelson
John Hay: Joseph Cross
Ulysses S. Grant: Jared Harris
Fernando Wood: Lee Pace
George Pendleton: Peter McRobbie
Elizabeth Keckley: Gloria Reuben
George Yeaman: Michael Stuhlbarg
Clay Hoggins: Walton Goggins
Corporal Ira Clark: David Oyelowo
First White Soldier: Lukas Haas
Second White Soldier: Dane DeHaan
Samuel Beckwith: Adam Driver
Lydia Smith: S. Epatha Merkerson

Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Tony Kushner
Based on a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Production design: Rick Carter
Film editing: Michael Kahn
Music: John Williams

The all-star patriotic historical pageant celebrating American democracy had long been a featured genre of Hollywood films until the disillusionments of Vietnam and Watergate put it pretty much out of favor. But during the brief resurgence of liberal optimism after the election of Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg decided to bring it out of mothballs with a film about Abraham Lincoln's struggles to pass the 13th amendment, banning slavery in the United States. He initially planned to star Liam Neeson in the title role, but when Neeson decided he was too old for the part, the choice fell on Daniel Day-Lewis, the most chameleonic of actors. Lincoln has been played on screen by actors as varied as Walter Huston, Henry Fonda, and Raymond Massey, but Day-Lewis covered himself with glory and encumbered himself with a third Oscar in the role. It is in fact a superb performance, emphasizing the humanity of the man with depictions of his marital problems, his earthy sense of humor (no previous movie Lincoln was ever heard to utter the word "shit"), and above all his willingness to play down-and-dirty politics. The bulk of the drama is in the maneuverings to get a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives to ratify the amendment, which has substantial opposition even within the president's own party, the Republicans. This means maneuvering some of the holdouts with promises of government jobs and patronage, a task that falls to a team of lobbyists led by W.N. Bilbo, played beautifully by James Spader. It also involves persuading the most volatile of abolitionists, Thaddeus Stevens, to utter compromising language on the floor of the House, in which he asserts that all men are equal before the law, but not necessarily equal "in all things," creating a fiery, funny scene for Tommy Lee Jones as Stevens. Lincoln is also forced to conceal that he is engaged in peace negotiations with the Confederates, fearing that this would lead to postponement of the vote on the amendment. Tony Kushner's screenplay is more cerebral than most, focusing on points of law and political maneuverings, which is why some reviewers and audiences were not fully enthusiastic about it. Though it was nominated for 12 Oscars, it won only two, for Day-Lewis and for production design, losing best picture to Argo (Ben Affleck) and best director to Ang Lee for Life of Pi. Both losses, I think, are inexcusable, as was Sally Field's loss as the fragile Mary Todd Lincoln to Anne Hathaway's lachrymose Fantine in Les Misérables (Tom Hooper). I suspect Lincoln will grow in esteem over the years, thanks to its many finely detailed performances, the superb re-creation of a period in its sets and costumes, and a general lack of cinematic clichés: John Williams even manages to compose a score without quoting from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "The Star-Spangled Banner," or any number of other sure-fire, heart-tugging patriotic melodies.

The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993)

Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Geraldine Chaplin, and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Age of Innocence

Newland Archer: Daniel Day-Lewis
Ellen Olenska: Michelle Pfeiffer
May Welland: Winona Ryder
Larry Lefferts: Richard E. Grant
Sillerton Jackson: Alec McCowen
Mrs. Welland: Geraldine Chaplin
Regina Beaufort: Mary Beth Hurt
Julius Beaufort: Stuart Wilson
Mrs. Mingott: Miriam Margolyes
Mrs. Archer: Siân Phillips
Henry van der Luyden: Michael Gough
Louisa van der Luyden: Alexis Smith
Mr. Letterblair: Norman Lloyd
Rivière: Jonathan Pryce
Ted Archer: Robert Sean Leonard
Narrator: Joanne Woodward

Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenplay: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
Based on a novel by Edith Wharton
Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus
Production design: Dante Ferretti
Film editing: Thelma Schoonmaker
Costume design: Gabriella Pescucci
Music: Elmer Bernstein

Voiceover narrators in movies are usually to be avoided: They often serve as a crutch for screenwriters and directors who can't tell their stories through dialogue and action. But Joanne Woodward's cool, wry, witty narrator in The Age of Innocence is an essential element: She's really playing Edith Wharton, or more properly the "narrative voice," the storyteller who is there to comment on and clarify the characters and their motives and backstories. It's a device, and a performance, that brings us closer to the source of the movie. Whether that's a good thing or not is subject to debate: Many think that trying to squeeze one medium, literature, together with another, motion pictures, does a disservice to both art forms. Still, The Age of Innocence does it better than most literary movies, including much of the late flood of Jane Austen adaptations and even some of the Merchant Ivory oeuvre. The chief criticism of the film is that it's over-upholstered, that the attention devoted to period detail tends to overwhelm the story. But Martin Scorsese assembled a cast that could upstage all the fabric and cutlery and crockery, starting with Woodward, but of course including the three stars on screen, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder, and extending to one of the best supporting casts ever mustered. My criticism is that the film is overlong, coming in at 139 minutes. I don't begrudge the time spent watching that cast, but the film does Wharton's story a disservice by making it seem more portentous than it is. Epic length in movies is justified if the topic demands it, like the Russian stand against Napoleon in Sergey Bondarchuk's War and Peace (1966) or the struggle to unite Italy in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963), to name two of the more successful historical epics. But Wharton was working, like Austen on her "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory," in comparative miniature, with a thin slice of history in which manners and morals, not countries and continents, were undergoing revolutionary change. Fiction like Wharton's is meditative, film like Scorsese's is visceral, and while narration like Woodward's allows for some of the first, what lives with us after the film ends is likely to be the impact of Dante Ferretti's production design, Gabriella Pescucci's Oscar-winning costumes, Elmer Bernstein's score, and especially Michael Ballhaus's images, not to mention the pleasure of watching Day-Lewis, Pfeiffer, Ryder, et al. at peak performance. 

Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)

Gangs of New York is such a sprawling, unfocused movie that I can almost imagine the filmmakers throwing up their hands and sighing, "Well, at least we've got Daniel." Because Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting holds the film together whenever it tends to sink into the banality of its revenge plot or to wander off into the eddies of New York City history. A historical drama like Gangs of New York needs two things: a compelling central story and an audience that knows something about the history on which it's based. But for all their violence and their anticipation of problems that continue to manifest themselves in the United States, the Draft Riots of 1863 and the almost two decades of gang wars that led up to them are mostly textbook footnotes to most Americans. Director Martin Scorsese's determination to depict them led to the hiring of a formidable team of screenwriters -- Jay Cocks, who wrote the story, and Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, who collaborated with Cocks on the screenplay. Unfortunately, the narrative thread that they came up with is tired. As a boy, Amsterdam Vallon saw his father, an Irish Catholic nicknamed "Priest" (Liam Neeson), cut down by Bill the Butcher in a huge battle between the Irish immigrant gang, the Dead Rabbits, and Bill's Protestant gang, the Natives. Sixteen years later Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns to the Five Points neighborhood determined to get revenge on Bill, who has managed to make peace with many of the old members of Vallon's father's gang and to become a power-player aligned with Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent). Vallon is introduced to Bill's criminal enterprise by an old boyhood friend, Johnny (Henry Thomas), and he begins to fall under Bill's spell -- along with that of a pretty pickpocket, Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz). But the relationship between Vallon and Jenny stirs the jealousy of Johnny, who is smitten with her, and he reveals to Bill that Vallon is the son of his old enemy, leading to a climactic showdown -- one that just happens to occur simultaneously with the Draft Riots. There's a lot of good stuff in Gangs of New York, including Michael Ballhaus's cinematography and Dante Ferretti's production design -- the sets were constructed at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. But the awkward attempt to merge the romantic revenge plot with the historical background shifts the focus away from what the film is supposedly about: racism, anti-immigrant nativism, political corruption, and exploitation of the poor. "You can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half," Tweed says. Oddly (and sadly), Gangs of New York seems more relevant today than it did in 2002, when the country was recovering from the 9/11 attacks. Then, the Oscar-nominated anthem by U2,  "The Hands That Built America," which concludes the film seemed to promise a spirit of unity, an affirmation that the country had overcome the antagonisms depicted in the movie. Today it has a far more ironic effect.

A Room With a View (James Ivory, 1985)

Rosemary Leach, Daniel Day-Lewis, Simon Callow, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves in A Room With a View

Lucy Honeychurch: Helena Bonham Carter
Charlotte Bartlett: Maggie Smith
George Emerson: Julian Sands
Mr. Emerson: Denholm Elliott
The Rev. Mr. Beebe: Simon Callow
Eleanor Lavish: Judi Dench
Cecil Vyse: Daniel Day-Lewis
Mrs. Honeychurch: Rosemary Leach
Freddy Honeychurch: Rupert Graves

Director: James Ivory
Screenplay: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Based on a novel by E.M. Forster
Cinematography: Tony Pierce-Roberts
Production design: Brian Ackland Snow, Gianni Quaranta
Music: Richard Robbins
Costume design: Jenny Beavan, John Bright

James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant had a collaboration that began with the formation of Merchant Ivory Productions in 1961 and lasted until Merchant's death in 2005. It usually included the screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The trio developed a reputation for literary adaptations that were beautifully filmed with opulent sets and costumes and a gallery of celebrated stars -- most of them British. But the trouble with developing a distinctive style is that you can become a cliché: "Merchant Ivory" eventually became a label for a film that was tastefully middlebrow -- well-done and entertaining but just a tad safe. It's a pity, because their best films -- Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993), and this one -- set a high standard, despite their "safeness." Few films have a better sense of place and time than A Room With a View, in its depiction of Florence at the start of the 20th century. Granted, it leans a bit too heavily on the cliché about stuffy Brits losing their cool in the warmer climate of Tuscany, but that's the fault of E.M. Forster's novel -- not one of his major works -- and not of Jhabvala's Oscar-winning screenplay. Oscars also went to the art direction team and to costumers Jenny Beavan and John Bright, and it was nominated for best picture, for the supporting performances of Denholm Elliott and Maggie Smith, for Ivory's direction, and for Tony Pierce-Roberts's cinematography. The cast includes Helena Bonham Carter (in her "corset-roles" period) and Julian Sands, along with a then little-known Daniel Day-Lewis. Proof that Day-Lewis is one of the greatest actors of all time is no longer needed, but it's worth contemplating that he created the character of the prissy Cecil Vyse in this film within a year of appearing as the gay street punk Johnny in My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears), and that he would follow with the sexy Tomas in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman, 1988), the paralyzed Christy Brown in My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989), and the dashing Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992). Day-Lewis's Cecil Vyse verges on a caricature of the sexually repressed Brit, but he has an affecting moment near the end when, after Lucy (Bonham Carter) breaks off their engagement, he emerges as a vulnerable, three-dimensional character. Richard Robbins's fine score is memorably supplemented by Kiri Te Kanawa's recordings of two Puccini arias: "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi and "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" from La Rondine.