American Splendour - more real than real life

A comic gem. Probably aimed more at middle-aged American men than at me – but I still laughed.

Funny and thought provoking. For those like me who have never heard of Harvey Pekar, the story is this: Harvey Pekar is an entirely average, rather dull, not very attractive man from Cleveland Ohio who decides to write a comic book about his life, called American Splendour. The comics are a runaway success, and Harvey becomes famous enough to be a regular guest on the Letterman show, that is, until he is thrown out for insulting NBC live on air. His wife Joyce is a fan who first writes to him when she can’t find a copy of the latest comic. Someone writes and produces a play of their life. Harvey gets cancer and writes a comic about that. And then the film is made.

These nesting realities make the artifice of the film completely transparent. At times it has the feel of a documentary, but we shouldn’t be too fooled by this. The real Harvey and Joyce appear in the film – both watching the filming on set, and being interviewed about whether they felt the play or comic accurately represented their lives. Some of their friends also appear, and are even stranger looking than the actors chosen to portray them in the film. We see a scene from the play, and observe ‘Harvey’ and ‘Joyce’ (the film actors) watching it. We see ‘Harvey’ and ‘Joyce’ (the play actors) kissing on the sofa, and Joyce throwing up. We watch Joyce’s reaction to the scene from the play – we can see her thinking that that’s not how it really happened, she didn’t throw herself at him like that. But then we realise that this ‘Joyce’ is no more real than the ‘Joyce’ on stage – she’s just the film ‘Joyce’. And the version of this event that we watched a few minutes ago in the film is no more ‘real’ than the version in the play. Who knows how it really happened? Only the real Harvey and real Joyce.

This transparency continues until the end of the film, when we fade from actor Harvey to real Harvey walking down the street.

And wouldn’t you know, Harvey, Joyce, and their adoptive daughter Danielle all have blogs at the Harvey Pekar website (although it’s not very live, the last post was in October 2003 so I suspect it was a bit of publicity for the film). In these days of reality TV and blogging it can be difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction. The lines are becoming very blurred. Even the ‘reality’ of blogs and reality-TV is only an edited reality. But then so are our memories.

Christmas films

This has been a good Christmas for films, at least for good quality blockbusters. Watching the latest Lord of the rings film just before Christmas has become a bit of a tradition for the past three years; it's sad that it has to come to an end. As far as I know there are no plans to remake The Hobbit in time for next Christmas!

I have enjoyed all the LOTR films, the first and last ones especially (Two Towers did suffer from the curse of being the middle film in the trilogy). The first shots of Hobbiton and Frodo made me feel as if I was seeing old friends for the first time in several years.

What I particularly liked about the last film was the time taken over the ending. All the loose ends were tied up: we saw Sam and Frodo returning to the Shire, Sam's wedding, and Frodo's last journey to the West with Bilbo and the elves. And yes, I know that the scouring of the Shire was missed out, but it would have been a complete anti-climax to the film, obscuring the destruction of the Ring and Sauron. To be honest it was always a bit of an anti-climax in the book. Dramatically, it made sense to leave it out - although I understand Peter Cushing's frustration at not appearing in the third film of the trilogy. I'm sure we will see him in the Director's cut version some time next year.

I was taken to see Master and Commander the other day. This isn't really my cup of tea, since I'm not a big fan of either films about ships or Russell Crowe, but it was surprisingly enjoyable. From the opening shots of the canons with their names lovingly inscribed in ink - "Jumping Billy", etc - I knew that this film would give plenty of detail about life on a frigate at the begining of the 19th century. It also painted a very clear picture of the qualities needed to be a good captain - and of what happened to those men who did not possess the necessary leadership skills. I was amazed by all the young teenage officers. I knew that young boys were press-ganged and went to sea at the tender age of eleven or twelve, but I had not realised that there were officers of this age. It brings home the rigidity of the class system. If it were not so deeply embedded, there is no way that the old tars would have taken orders from a twelve-year-old boy!

I also want to see The Cold Mountain - if only to see Nicole Kidman looking less than perfect for once!

Laurel Canyon

We went to see this with some friends at the weekend. The reviews I saw beforehand suggested that the film was an excellent vehicle for Frances Mcdormand, one of my favourite actresses and veteran of several Coen brothers films. The film does give Mcdormand - who plays Jane, a Hollywood music producer - plentiful opportunities to flex her considerable acting muscles (and she has been working out in real life as well, judging by her toned physique in the film), but it is much more than just a showcase for her. It is also a thoughtful exploration by Lisa Cholodenko of some murky areas of interpersonal relationships to do with fidelity, temptation and self-knowledge, although the patchy character development weakens it in places.

Sam (Christian Bale) has – against his better judgement – taken his straight-laced, bookish fiancée, Alex (Kate Beckinsale) to live with his mother, Jane (Mcdormand) in her house-cum-recording studio in Hollywood. Jane lives an ‘artistic’ lifestyle involving drink, drugs and transitory sexual relationships and is in the middle of finishing an album when Sam and Alex move in. Of course she is also sleeping (noisily) with Ian (Alessandro Nivola), the lead singer of the British band she is working with. Sam and Alex are both MDs: Sam is training as a psychiatrist and Alex is finishing her PhD on the sexual habits of fruit flies. Sam’s relationship with his mother is difficult, and he has rebelled against her unconventional lifestyle by entering a respected profession and becoming engaged to Alex, who was top of her class at Harvard and is from a wealthy New England family.

The film centres around three developing relationships: Sam’s increasing attraction to Sara, one of his fellow interns at the hospital (played by the toothsome Natascha McElhone); Alex’s attraction to Jane and Ian; and the beginnings of a proper adult relationship between Sam and Jane. The first two relationships are taboo because their primary motivator is sexual. But that is not the whole story: Sara encourages Sam to question his motivations for training as a doctor, and Jane takes Alex’s rather undeveloped views on ‘popular music’ seriously. So Jane’s house, which is beautifully captured in the film, and in which much of he action takes place, acts as a crucible for the development of Sam and Alex individually. Inevitably this leads both characters to question their reasons for being in the relationship and they are both tempted to stray. After some serious sexual temptation, including Alex, Jane and Ian swimming naked in the pool together, Sam and Alex both resist temptation and reaffirm their relationship in an emotional scene. Crucially, it is Jane who eventually pulls back from the brink and stops Alex from throwing herself at both her and Ian. She has realised that her love for her son is more important than immediate sexual gratification, and this realisation enables her to hold a meaningful conversation with Sam for the first time, and to apologise for being a bad parent. The film ends ambiguously. Sara has become attached to Sam and, from a brief telephone conversation, we realise that she is not just a sexual object but that she, too, has a heart, and would like to have a relationship with Sam (initially she just wanted to sleep with him). Alex also continues her relationship with Ian, although at a rather safer level. I think the strong hint from Cholodenko is that although the immediate storm has passed, Sam and Alex will have to continuously strive for fidelity if they want their future marriage to be a success. As will we all…

The script was beautifully written (also Cholodenko) and all the actors were blessed with some gem-like lines. There was a recurring theme of mis-hearings and misunderstandings, and some perfectly pitched strained conversations between Sam and Alex on the phone: “Do you want me to come to the party?” “Do you want to come?” My favourite moment was a much needed blast of bitter comedy at the end of the big party scene where Sam discovers Alex in bed with his mother and her boyfriend. Alex immediately takes responsibility for her actions – flirting with Ian – by saying “It was my fault”. Jane feels that as the older woman, and Sam’s mother, she should have stopped Alex earlier, and contradicts her: “No, it was my fault”. Ian, in true cocky British male style, cheerfully says, “Well, it wasn’t my fault!” This is a wonderfully wry comment by Cholodenko on the tendency of women to take the blame and of men to exonerate themselves (although to be fair to Ian, he does later admit some responsibility).

The script was rather rocky for the first ten minutes and the story took a while to settle down. By the end of the film, I had almost forgotten this, but I was left slightly puzzled by Alex’s actions, because there is no real explanation of her quick change of direction. One minute she is casting disapproving glances at Sam for having smoked pot with his mother, the next, she is smoking it herself with Jane and the band, abandoning her thesis for days in the studio, and snogging Jane. This did not ring true, as there had been no suggestion that Alex was repressed in any way: unless we are meant to infer that brainy, geeky girls are always repressed in some way and are just waiting for the opportunity to let themselves go.

I haven’t seen Cholodenko’s first film, High Art, but I would like to. She seems interested in some important issues around the difficulties of intimacy. I hope she continues to explore them.

Far from Heaven

I missed this film when it was showing in the cinemas and have just watched the DVD. What a shame that I didn't see it on the big screen - the film always promised to be visually stunning, and from its opening moments, when Julianne Moore pulled up in front of her 1950s white-painted house in a vehicle that looked more like an ice-cream than a car, I knew I was not going to be disappointed. The visual impact of each scene has been so carefully planned that every single shot is a beautifully constructed work of art: a view of the town is framed by a branch of autumn leaves, and during the opening scenes, which take place in autumn (in New England) the actors' clothes are all in golden shades of red and orange and green, matching the scenery.

But the film is not just beautiful to look at: there is a lot going on under the surface here. Set in 1950s suburbia, Julianne Moore plays Kathy, a housewife who appears to have it all - successful husband, two children, girlfriends - and is interviewed as a model housewife by the local newspaper. However, the reality is somewhat different. Early hints in the film about her husband's lack of interest in her sexually are followed through when Kathy discovers her husband kissing another man. He admits that he is a homosexual, and, tortured by what they see as a disease, embarks on a course of unspecified medical treatment to attempt a 'cure'. He sees the course of treatment through although he is clearly under severe mental strain, and husband and wife go on holiday to Miami after joking that 'everything is pink there'. This temporary peace is broken once and for all when he falls in love with a man 'who wants to be with him' and they divorce. In the meantime, Kathy grows increasingly close to their black gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert, a cultured widower with a young daughter. After they are seen in public together the family is ostracised by the close-knit white community in the town, and Kathy decides that they can no longer be friends. As the film ends, she says goodbye to father and daughter, who have been forced to leave town. They have been caught in the middle of the town's two communities, suffering racial abuse from the whites and stones through the window from the blacks, who feel equally betrayed.

The film examines two prejudices that would never have been explicitly discussed in a film about the 1950s made in the 1950s. One of the most telling scenes for me is towards the end of the film, when Kathy finally admits to her best friend that her marriage is ending because her husband is a homosexual. Her friend does not like homosexuals (both we and Kathy know this from an earlier conversation) but sympathises strongly with Kathy's situation, and offers her full support, until Kathy tells her that she is friends with her gardener. This betrayal of the white community is insupportable to her friend, and she turns her back on Kathy, unable to support this behaviour that she cannot understand.

The film is emotionally intelligent - another wonderfully understated scene is the conversation between Kathy and her husband immediately after she has caught him kissing a man. The whole conversation takes place in unfinished, generalised, half-sentences: her speaks of his 'problems' and she suggests a doctor, but the word 'homosexual' is never spoken. The two characters are unable to name explicitly what they have both seen with their own eyes, because they simply did not have a language to discuss these issues. Neither of them are stupid, they are just constrained by their background and a complete lack of understanding of the issues they are facing.

The film makes wonderful and knowing use of melodrama. This references back to real 1950s films - the shock when he strikes her, her shock when she opens the office door to find him in the arms of his lover. Elmore Bernstien's music is used to good effect here, strong string chords adding to the melodrama.

Despite the sad ending of the film - her husband has left her and the man she loves has left town - there is a note of hope. She admits that she has learned about moving in different worlds - her horizons have been broadened, and in time the horizons of society may also widen to allow a black men to speak to white women. This is confirmed by the closing shot - we have moved from autumn through winter into spring, and the first blossom is on the trees.