The Spanish Prisoner

Barney’s Version, directed by Richard J. Lewis, with a screenplay by Michael Konyves, based on a novel by Mordecai Richler, is essentially the life story of Barney Ponofsky (Paul Giamatti). His first marriage, to an emotionally unstable actress, Clara (Rachelle Lefevre) ends tragically. He then marries another woman (Minnie Driver). At the wedding reception, Barney gets drunk and sees Miriam (Rosamund Pike). He immediately falls in love with her and begins pursuing her aggressively. Eventually, he is able to get divorced and marry Miriam. They have children. When their children are grown, they drift apart. Miriam divorces Barney and marries another man. The film turns sentimental at the end when Barney develops Alzheimer’s disease.

I found Barney’s Version amusing, but there were things in it that I found unbelievable. First of all, I simply didn’t believe that an intelligent woman like Miriam would fall for a dorky character like Barney (who isn’t even good-looking), especially since he makes a complete ass out of himself at their first meeting. And he makes an ass out of himself at their second meeting as well. Yeah, this is another movie about a woman who falls for a guy who is a jerk. If all one had to go by were movies, one would think that the way to win a woman’s heart is annoy the hell out of her while humiliating oneself.

Also, when one of Barney’s friends disappears, a police detective becomes convinced that Barney murdered him. Now when the police want to pin a crime on someone, they can do so easily. Yet the murder accusation is never more than a passing inconvenience for Barney. Again, I just didn’t buy it.

I would have enjoyed this film more if it had been more plausible and less sentimental.

Recently I saw the short live action and short animated films that have been nominated for Academy Awards this year. Overall, I liked the animated films better than the live action ones. Animation seems to work better in the short format.

The best of the animations was an Australian film, The Lost Thing. It tells the story of a boy who finds a creature who is half animal and half machine and of his efforts to find a home for it. The story is very simple; the film succeeds mainly because of its depiction of an amusing fantasy world. Also good was Day & Night, a Pixar film, about two humanoid creatures, one embodying day and the other night, and their competitive relationship. (I read afterwards on Wikipedia that the voice-over in the film is from a lecture given by the pop psychologist, Wayne Dyer. Funny, I had completely forgotten there was a voice-over.) The French film, Madagascar, a Journey Diary, is, as the title suggests, an animated travel film about Madagascar, charmingly done. The Gruffalo, a British adaptation of a children’s picture book, is a bit dull, apparently because they padded it out to a half hour, so it could be shown on TV. The weakest of the animated shorts was the American Let’s Pollute, a heavy-handed attempt at satire.

The worst of the live action was an Irish film, The Crush. In it, a school boy develops a crush on his teacher. He becomes jealous when he learns that she is engaged. He gets a gun, and in front of the teacher, he threatens to kill her fiancée. While pleading for his life, the man reveals himself to be an asshole. She cuts off the engagement. The film ends with her showing her gratitude towards the boy for saving her from a bad marriage. I found this ludicrous, and other people in the audience seemed to react the same way I did. Why this film was nominated is a mystery to me.

A little more believable was The Confession, which is from Britain. A boy, Sam, is about to have his first confession. He can’t think of what he has to confess. A pamphlet his priest gives him lists playing pranks as a sin. So Sam decides to play a prank, so he will have something to confess. Sam and his friend, Jacob, steal a scarecrow and leave him in the middle of a road, so it will look like a human body. A driver nearly hits it, swerves off the road, and is killed. Later, Jacob suspects that Sam will tell what they did. They get into a fight and Sam kills Jacob. In the final scene, Sam goes to confession, but he is unable to admit what he did. This film seems to be a criticism of religion, although it’s not clear to me exactly what it’s trying to say. Judging from this film and The Crush, it seems that the Academy likes melodramatic stories about children.

Wish 143, another British film, is about a teenager with terminal cancer, who wants to experience sex before he dies. When he is unable to get a girl to sleep with him, a priest fixes him up with a prostitute. However, the boy merely asks her to hold him. Again, I just didn’t buy it.

The best of the live action films is Na Wewe, which is a Belgian production. A bus going through Burundi is halted by a Hutu militia, who are looking for Tutsis. One by one, each of the passengers has to convince the Hutus that he or she is not a Tutsi. The fear and humiliation of each character is palpable. The film is disturbing, without being melodramatic.

Then, there’s the American film, God of Love. It’s like your typical Hollywood comedy, except instead of being two hours long and unfunny, it’s only fifteen minutes long and unfunny. I suppose this is progress of sorts.

I suppose the fact that people can make a comedy about terrorists is an indication of how far we’ve come since the hysteria following the September 11th attacks. Four Lions was directed and co-written by Chris Morris, who, I’m told, is sort of an English version of Jon Stewart. This film is often called a “satire”, though satirizing terrorism is a bit like satirizing Nazism: an exercise in demonstrating the obvious. Morris more accurately calls it a “farce”, though I would use the term “dark comedy”. As I watched this movie, I was reminded of the classic British comedy, The Ladykillers, although the latter is a much funnier film.

Omar (Riz Ahmed), Barry (Nigel Lindsay), Waj (Kayvan Novak), Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) and Hassan (Arsher Ali) are Islamist terrorists in Sheffield, in the North of England. We’re never told why they became terrorists. The film mostly revolves around their plot to attack a marathon in London. The comedy arises from the stupidity of these characters. Although the film never becomes The Three Stooges Meet Osama Bin Laden, it comes perilously close at times. However, the terrorists are not the only ones who are dense. Everyone they meet is oblivious to the obvious signs that they are planning an attack. And the police are even more stupid than the terrorists are. Interestingly, the only characters in this film who don’t come across as completely clueless are some jihadists that Omar and Waj meet in Pakistan.

As in The Ladykillers, the main characters get themselves killed off, one by one, during the course of the film. What makes the ineptitude of the protagonists in The Laydkillers funny, however, is precisely the fact that we know that they are not stupid. Watching the characters in Four Lions getting killed is a bit like watching stray animals wandering across a freeway. Also, I found their continual bickering a bit wearing at times.

Four Lions does have some funny moments in it. However, Tamara Drewe remains, far and away, the funniest comedy to come out of 2010.

Another Year, a film by the British director, Mike Leigh, portrays events in a one-year period in the lives of several people. The central characters are an elderly married couple, Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). Their house serves as the setting for most of the film. Here we see the various people who drift in and out of their lives: Mary (Lesley Manville), a lonely divorcée; Ken (Peter Wight), who eats, drinks and smokes too much; Ronnie (David Bradley), Tom’s brother, who is mourning the recent death of his wife; and Joe (Oliver Maltman), their son. Tom and Gerri seem content and well-adjusted, yet they are unable to be of much help to the unhappy people around them.

I’m told that Leigh’s approach to making a film is to first have his actors improvise scenes, and then he constructs a script based on these scenes. This approach is clearly very effective in Another Year. Everything in this film seems real and convincing. There is none of the contrived melodrama of The Kids Are All Right (which has received four Academy Award nominations, believe it or not). I found myself caring about the characters and what happens to them. This film is subtly tragic, yet there are also funny moments.

The screening I went to was sold out. The audience was mostly older people. I think this shows that there is an audience for films that aren’t just about young people.