Drama

Colette: Carnal Explorations, with a Parisian Gloss

Jeremy BeckReviews
Keira Knightley in "Colette"

Early in Colette, the entrepreneur Henry Gauthier-Villars—better known as Willy, his nom de plume—lays out his plan to publish a wildly popular novel. He conceives of an epic work that’s both refined and ribald, literate enough to appeal to highbrows but sufficiently tawdry to intrigue “the unwashed masses”. Then he pauses, musing, “Maybe it’s the other way around.”

He might be onto something. The issue endemic to many period pieces—this one opens in 1892 and spans roughly 15 years—is a surfeit of gentility, and a corresponding lack of vulgarity, like a catered dinner party with no spice and no impudent conversation. Colette plainly has the handsomeness part of the equation down pat, sporting a luxuriant score, ravishing costumes, and fluid camerawork. What surprises and enchants about this movie, which was directed by Wash Westmoreland from a script he wrote with Richard Glatzer (his late husband) and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, is how breezily entertaining it is. Colette is elegant, yes, but it is also funny, sexy, angry, and even a little bit naughty. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko: Gauche is good. Read More

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Puzzle: Falling to Pieces, and Putting Them Together

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kelly Macdonald searches for meaning in "Puzzle"

In one of the few lyrical stretches of Puzzle, Marc Turtletaub’s sensitive and sad new drama, Agnes (the perpetually unappreciated Kelly Macdonald) rides a New York subway car while a blind man stands in the center and sings “Ave Maria” in a plaintive falsetto. Not long after, Agnes is served tea by a woman named Maria, and she points out the oddity that the namesake of Schubert’s piece is now providing her with a beverage. Her tea-drinking companion is unmoved, dismissing the parallel as an act of mere randomness that carries no cosmic significance. Agnes remains unconvinced: “It has to mean something.”

Does it, though? Given the sheer size of the universe, I’m inclined to agree with her partner and hesitate to ascribe any meaning to such an apparent coincidence. But it’s hard to blame Agnes, seeing as her own, private search for meaning is the animating force behind Puzzle, a movie about a seemingly stock figure who suddenly resolves to discover more of herself, and of the world. It’s also hard not to turn the question around and aim it at Puzzle itself. This is an unusually gentle and well-observed film, with a peculiar attention to its central characters and their rhythmic dynamics, but what does it really mean? Read More

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BlacKkKlansman: For the Boys in Blue, Black Man Dons White Robe

Jeremy BeckReviews
John David Washington goes undercover in Spike Lee's "BlacKkKlansman"

During an interlude of rare tranquility in BlacKkKlansman, undercover detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) and his sorta-girlfriend, Patrice (Laura Harrier, from Spider-Man: Homecoming), stroll through a serene wooded area, highlighted by a bubbling stream and colorful foliage. They’re talking, as fledgling lovers tend to do, about their favorite films, and Ron asks Patrice whether she prefers Super Fly or Shaft. Patrice, the president of the Black Student Union at Colorado College, is adamant. “Shaft,” she answers decisively, explaining that she has no use for something like Super Fly, which perpetuates the stereotype of black men as pimps and thugs. Taken aback by the severity of her criticism, Ron urges Patrice to relax. After all, he says in protest, “it’s just a movie!”

That sort of dismissive, laissez-faire hand-waving—the fallacious notion that art should simply be absorbed rather than analyzed, contextualized, and debated—has never and will never apply to the motion pictures of Spike Lee. For more than three decades now, the director has made all manner of “joints”—war epics and crime thrillers, sweeping period biopics and intimate family dramas, good movies and bad ones—but all of them share a purpose that goes beyond entertainment (though they are often entertaining). Lee is one of America’s most proudly political filmmakers, using his work not just to provide audiences with a few hours of diverting pleasure but to educate, instigate, preach, and rattle. BlacKkKlansman, which tells the story of Ron’s infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in 1972 Colorado, fits squarely within this lineage. It is by turns a suspenseful police procedural, a powerful piece of agitprop, and a ferocious indictment of a reeling nation that, in its maker’s view, continues to neglect and suppress its black citizenry. It is not just a movie. Read More

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Leave No Trace: Out of the Woods, But Not Fitting In

Jeremy BeckReviews
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in "Leave No Trace"

Every night before they go to sleep, the 13-year-old girl and her father, nestled snugly in a cramped tent, say goodnight to each other without using words. Instead, they make a sort of clicking sound, bringing their tongues against the back of their front teeth, the type of noise one might use to summon a horse: “tchic-tchik.” In other contexts, it might sound silly; here, it’s an expression of sincere, absolute love.

To my recollection, nobody actually says “I love you” in Leave No Trace—the gentle, empathetic, quietly devastating new movie from Debra Granik—but the concept of devotion is nevertheless sewn into the film’s very fabric. It’s present in the relationship between the father, Will (Ben Foster, against type), and the girl, Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, revelatory), who open the picture residing comfortably and illegally in the verdant woods outside Portland. It’s found in the respect that the two demonstrate for nature, with all its wonders and terrors. (The title derives from a popular conservationist ethos.) And it’s apparent in the warm regard that Granik displays for her characters, whom she treats with curiosity, tenderness, and honesty. Read More

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First Reformed: Still Preaching, But Is Anyone Listening?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ethan Hawke as a plagued preacher in "First Reformed"

Ethan Hawke has always had a crease in his face, a thin vertical line running from the center of his forehead to the bridge of his nose. But this crinkle somehow looks more pronounced in First Reformed, as though the weight of the world has been pushing in on his features and flattening the surrounding skin. Hawke is a naturally garrulous presence—recall his motormouthed writer of Richard Linklater’s Before movies, as well as his cool dad of Boyhood—which makes him a curious choice to play Reverend Toller, a solitary preacher haunted by internal demons. But just as Hawke’s career has slowly illuminated the considerable talent behind the folksy Texas charm (he’s recently done some of his best work in low-profile films like Predestination and 10,000 Saints), First Reformed gradually reveals itself as a different creature, a more subtle beast, than it first appears. What starts as a sober character study eventually transforms, almost miraculously, into… something else.

To say too much would risk spoiling the story’s surprises, but it’s important to note that the story is surprising, and that it smartly leverages our expectations against us. As you settle in to First Reformed and absorb its particular aesthetic and narrative qualities—its cramped aspect ratio, its grey palette, its solemn and solitary voiceover—you are likely to deduce that the movie will unfold as an attentive but familiar exploration of its complicated, grief-stricken hero. Your assumption will not be entirely wrong; to the last, First Reformed commits completely to its mission of understanding what makes Reverend Toller tick. But Paul Schrader, the iconoclast who wrote and directed this movie and whose name will be forever linked with his script for Taxi Driver, is not interested in making a gentle prestige picture. He goes for the throat as well as the soul. Read More

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