DVD reviews

[calimac]

Midnight in Paris. It was a good thing when Woody Allen finally stopped playing the Woody Allen character in Woody Allen movies. Now he leaves it to people like Owen Wilson, who is actually much better at it. The whimsical plot of this movie creaks and groans a great deal in getting itself set up, but once it's off and rolling - that is, once Owen accepts what's happening to him and just goes with the flow - it's an absolute delight from then on through the last drop. The previous Woody film it most resembles is The Purple Rose of Cairo. It's not quite as good, but the theme is the same: can you live in your fantasies?

Three other points. 1) In one sense, the plot is about the inevitable breakup of Owen and his fiancée. Usually I find such stories too sad and upsetting to watch. But they're so obviously utterly unsuited for each other from square one, and it's handled so lightly and skillfully, I didn't mind. (It's necessary, however, to empathize with the goofball him rather than the brittle her, and I'd like to hear from women who've seen it if this was a problem for them.) 2) In another sense, it's a love letter to Paris. I've never been to Paris, but mutatis mutandis (a big caveat, for the cities have very different atmospheres) the street scenes of this movie remind me vividly of what it's like to just walk around Rome, so now I feel I know what it's like to walk around Paris. Thanks, Woody. 3) After you watch the movie, watch the trailer. It's an amazing trailer. It gives simultaneously an accurate and a cheekily misleading idea of what the movie is like, and, unlike every other movie trailer of the past couple decades, it doesn't summarize or even give away the plot. Amazing.

Nightmare Alley. The 1947 film noir with Tyrone Power. Watched as a crude substitute for reading the novel, which I don't want to do, but I was curious. First reaction: A lot of good acting, too much of it gone to waste on typically crappy Forties-movie romantic dialog. Second reaction: Oh, come on, would that carny blather really work on everyone? "Every boy has a dog," say the shysters, so every man will think the description of the image of a boy running barefoot through the hills with a dog is him. Well, I didn't have a dog. I never ran barefoot either. Did have hills, though. Third reaction: This is supposed to be the story of the fall of an over-reaching man. Actually, though, it's mostly about his rise, leaving his fall to be stuffed hastily, details mostly undepicted, in the last reel. Fourth reaction: Yes, that was a big flashing neon plot sign prefiguring the end of the movie at the very beginning. I thought so. Final reaction: Wow, what a creepy story. No wonder the author's wife left him.

The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries. The original BBC adaptations, with Ian Carmichael. I saw these when they were first on Masterpiece Theatre decades ago, but I'd only ever seen a couple of them since. In fact they were my introduction to Sayers, almost the only canonical murder-mystery novelist I really like. Take the eleven Wimsey novels, remove the four with Harriet Vane (whom the producers obviously didn't want to handle), delete the two remaining ones which are the least good, and you have the five of this series. They turn out to be quite delightful, particularly for catching stock British tv actors of the day whom I recognize from The Prisoner etc. In fact, one of them was one of the Castle Anthrax "doctors" ("They, uh, have a basic medical training, yes") in Holy Grail. Holy blood!

The least successful was the adaptation of one of the best books, Murder Must Advertise. Too much of what makes that story delightful had to be edited out to fit, and Paul Darrow, later to win fame as the psychopathic Avon on Blakes 7, is too coiled and repressed to be well-cast as the weak, self-indulgent Tallboy. He's just about the only case of that, though. The script for The Nine Tailors, best of the five originals, tears the novel apart entirely but rebuilds it moderately well. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is better still, with some great small parts. Clouds of Witness actually improves on a somewhat dodgy novel. Best of all the adaptations was Five Red Herrings. I've only read the novel once; I found it difficult to keep track of who was who among seven irascible Scottish landscape painters, nor could I work up much interest in which one of them killed which other one of them, and when, amid a welter of railway timetables. But on television, where you can see all seven and try to remember which is which, it works pretty well.

By the way: though all five stories are set off by a dead body, only two of them turn out to be actual murders, with villainous intent to kill.

Comments

[affinity8.livejournal.com]

I enjoy Midnight in Paris as a complete writer's fantasy that plays fast and loose with its own rules. I wish that Woody Allen had spent a little time making the fiancee less shallow and snippy. It's not clear how the return-to-the present works, or why every famous person in the past automatically welcomes Owen Wilson as one of their own (sure, I'll read your novel, says Gertrude Stein). On the other hand, Paris is lovely, the love interest is lovely, and Hemingway rocks.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

why every famous person in the past automatically welcomes Owen Wilson as one of their own

That was part of what I meant by the plot creaking and groaning in setting itself up. Why should the Fitzgeralds, or Hemingway either, seem so interested in a guy who just gapes at them? Once he stops gaping it's much better. But Stein has been established as willing to read tyros' novels, and she glances at this one before agreeing to do it, and Owen, like most Woody self-characters, is really good at his job though he looks too feckless for it, so I had less problem with that point.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I also thought that the movie would have been much stronger if the fiancée, and her parents weren't such stereotypes. There is a legitimate argument to be made about living in the present but instead they were presented as unrealistic one-note villains.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

In the end, Owen's character realizes that he, too, can live in the present, because he doesn't have to go to the past to find what he wants. It's actually a subtle argument about the patina of the past, expressed in purely comic terms, and it makes the ending a lot happier than that of The Purple Rose of Cairo.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Um, yes. Not sure what this has to do with my objection to the cartoonish characterization of the parents and the fiancée.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You had said, "There is a legitimate argument to be made about living in the present but instead [the fiancee and her parents, the people presenting it] were presented as unrealistic one-note villains."

So I reply that a better argument for living in the present is made by Owen at the end of the movie. It's not as purely materialistic as the earlier argument, it's more suited for Owen's tastes and needs, and it works out a lot happier for him.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Your objection to their characterization seemed to be that they were not allowed to present the argument, for living in the present, fairly. So I point out that it does later get presented fairly, by somebody else.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

My objection was that I thought it would have been a stronger movie if the proponents on the other side had not been so cartoonish. The fact that the hero eventually came to the realization on his own doesn't negate that problem.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The way you phrased it, it sounded like the reason their cartoonishness was a problem was that it was in the service of presenting a bad argument for living in the present. That would make a better argument into a negation of that problem.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I obviously disagree. The fact that the main character came to the realization on his own does not negate the fact that it would have been a stronger movie if the opposing force had been more believable and less cartoonish. It did weaken the argument on the other side even if that argument ultimately prevailed.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What you're disagreeing with is actually what I thought you said, so you can see how wrong-footed I've felt throughout this entire discussion.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I think what's been confusing you is that you read my statement as meaning that had they been stronger characters they might have caused the hero to come to his realization earlier, but that's not what I said. I was objecting to the way the characters were drawn, not the ending of the movie where the hero realizes the point for himself.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, I read your statement as saying that the reason their being stereotypes was irritating is that they presented the argument for living in the present unrealistically. To that, a better argument (presented later) would mitigate the problem. Instead, I guess you meant that you disliked their being villainous stereotypes regardless of what they said, and that the argument for living in the present was only the specific example of their irritatingness. In which case, somebody else saying it less irritatingly wouldn't help.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

"By the way: though all five stories are set off by a dead body, only two of them turn out to be actual murders, with villainous intent to kill."

Which is, I think, one of the reasons we go back to Sayers so assiduously. What I think is her most acclaimed novel, Gaudy Night, is the only classic mystery story I can think of that has no death at all.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey.

Which doesn't take much away from your point, but still ...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hah. Fair point. (I should add that I detest The Franchise Affair with a loathing that is almost unique in the world of books-I-have-read, but nevertheless: you are right.)

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Really? Why? It has a bunch of dislikable elements and (for me) other likable ones. On the whole, I'm rather fond of it.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I thought it was an act of sheer vicious snobbery. Right at the start, the nice middle-class women accused by the nasty working-class girl say (words to the effect of) "Oh, we expect she was off having seedy sex with a sailor" - and lo, they are exactly right, and the whole book exists to prove it, and at the end "the police closed in on the perjuror" and that's that. What I wanted, what the story craved was a solution whereby neither party was lying, but she didn't even try; the assumption that everybody made - the accused women, the detective and the author too - was just that the girl was lying, and lo, 'twas so. That's lazy, as well as all the other offences.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Well, I certainly can't argue with that. I read it way too young to be particularly aware of such things, and my re-readings are colored by my first impressions.

I will say that I like the portrayal of the viewpoint character (basically the only man in the story) as kind of hidebound and uncreative, while all the agency belongs to the women. And I really like the older woman, despite the class issues. It's one of those "appreciating problematic works" situations that are getting a lot of attention right now.

But I respect your position more than I respect my own.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've never read anything by Tey except The Daughter of Time, which I enjoyed despite vehement disagreement with its famous historical thesis. So I'm curious to follow this conversation.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'd call that an aspect of what I find appealing, which is that most of the books are not really focused on the detecting. They're comedies of manners with mysteries in them, rather than mysteries with impedimentia. Remember the subtitle of Busman's Honeymoon: "a love story with detective interruptions." And that's even one of the conventional ones, with the villainous murderer and everything.

But I agree that Gaudy Night is one of the best. That, The Nine Tailors, and Murder Must Advertise, are my picks for the summits of the series.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

The thing I didn't like about Wilson being so sympathetic compared to his fiance is that I really like Rachel McAdams (fell in love with her in Season 1 of Slings and Arrows) so I was grumpy on her behalf. Otherwise, the disparity would probably not have bothered me.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I really liked McAdams in Slings and Arrows too (and I find her much more physically attractive than Marion Cotillard, which proves only that my taste in beauty doesn't match the male protagonist's, something that happens to me in movies a lot), so I was a little thrown by her playing such an unpleasant character, but in pure comedy I can forgive a lot, and she did do a very good acting job with it.