redemption

Spooner

andrea — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Warren Spooner is an underachiever in a remarkable family. As a child, he sneaks around town peeing in people’s shoes and watching things burn in the city incinerator. As an adult, he first becomes a major league baseball player and then a writer, seemingly destined for early demise as he eagerly enters into questionable situations with his boxer pal Stanley Faint. After a string of surgeries, he has enough metal in his body to warrant concern about the weight of his coffin when he eventually dies. There has never been a lovable black sheep quite like Spooner.

His step-father Calmer, a quiet, contemplative ex-naval commander turned teacher, is a constant source of support as Spooner gets older but doesn’t quite grow up. Graciously married to Spooner’s long-suffering mother Lilly, Calmer dutifully arrives in the principal’s office, in Spooner’s hospital room, and eventually spends his dying days defending his adoptive son’s property and sanity in ways perhaps forever unknown to the then-middle aged family man. If Spooner is on an epic journey that spans five decades of difficulty, unemployment, heartbreak, and redemption, then Calmer is his near-constant companion, even when they’re separated by distance and time. The depth of their emotional journeys and the lengths taken to save one another are impossible to sum up in a review of any length.

With a reading group guide included, Spooner is clearly more popular than I realized. It’s no surprise; I happily and confidently place it on a list of the best books of the naughts. A riotously funny, deeply moving instant classic, it will be given as a gift to more than one angsty pal with the hope that Spooner and Calmer’s respective stories of confusion and eventual redemption will resonate in the myriad ways they did for me. Most compelling of all are the similarities between Spooner’s experiences and that of National Book Award-winning author Pete Dexter. My suggestion is to read the book before you research Dexter; otherwise, much will be prematurely revealed.

If you empathize with issues related to family dysfunction, young adult angst, unspoken affection between male family members, and an inability to ever fully mature into a socially functional grown-up, you should not miss this epic journey.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, January 5th 2011

Biutiful

caitlin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Focus Features

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest film, Biutiful, survives on the quality of its performances but suffers under the morose weight of Iñárritu’s bleak worldview. It is not a surprise that Biutiful is obsessed with the darker side of life—after all, this is from the same director that created Babel and 21 Grams. Yet it remains a surprise that Iñárritu’s direction fails to actually believe in what it’s saying; though the film seeks to illustrate the personal redemption and spiritual acceptance of its protagonist, its uplifting moral is beaten down by Iñárritu’s apparent desire to fill the film with as much awfulness as possible.

Biutiful tells the story of Uxbal, a father of two who makes his living as a middleman organizing work for illegal immigrants in Barcelona. Uxbal is also able to speak to the recently deceased, passing their final messages to those left behind, a task for which he reluctantly accepts payment. The film follows Uxbal as he comes to terms with his impending death, trying to prepare himself, his estranged bipolar wife, and his children for what is to come.

Unfortunately, Iñárritu’s direction seems to work against the narrative thrust of the film; as Uxbal accepts his mortality and attempts to leave behind a positive legacy, the film becomes more focused on the horrors of death. Halfway through the film the viewer has seen Uxbal urinate bloody urine (multiple times), a close-up of a decaying corpse, and an image of Bardem’s wasted figure wearing a diaper in the shower. All of these horrible images undercut Iñárritu’s narrative of redemption and acceptance.

The film sustains itself on the strong performances of its two leads, Javier Bardem and Maricel Álvarez. Javier Bardem provides the perfect mix of darkness and light in his portrayal of Uxbal. His portrayal is earnest, and it is hard to imagine any other actor so skillfully portraying a man decaying physically while strengthening spiritually. His performance is matched only by Maricel Álvarez’s portrayal of his bipolar wife, Marambra. Álvarez, a well-known performer in Argentina, shines in her first film performance. Her portrayal of Marambra is rich and complicated, and not the caricatured representation of bipolarity often portrayed on screen. She does more than hold her own against the raw power of Bardem’s Uxbal. It is unfortunate that such outstanding performances are drowned by Iñárritu’s melancholic direction. It’s perhaps more unfortunate that Iñárritu seems to have drowned his own message under the weight of his telling it.

Written by: Joanna Chlebus, November 29th 2010

Thirst

admin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:08:00 +0000

Directed by Park Chan-Wook

Focus Features

Some say the mark of a great film is that it defies our expectations. If that's the case, then Oldboy director Park Chan-wook's latest should be considered one of the best. Thirst is the story of a Catholic priest who becomes a vampire, and has thus earned the label of a horror flick, but the film itself is virtually genre-proof. Sure, the experience of watching it was somewhat similar to that of any slasher, in that I had to cringe and turn my head away from the gore from time to time (an embarrassing admission for a film reviewer). But the sheer variety and complexity of the thoughts and emotions Thirst conjured makes it much more than just "horror" and, frankly, much more than just another film.

Appropriately, Thirst is a feast for the senses, Park's sound and visuals quickly tumbling toward the operatic as priest Sang-Hyun (The Host's Song Kang-ho) surrenders more and more to his vampiric desires. Sang-Hyun's addictive relationship with the young Tae-Joo (Kim Ok-vin) nearly puts him—and us—on sensory overload. Park acknowledges—or rather, foreshadows—that this isn't necessarily a good thing, making their sex scenes alternately titillating and disgusting.

What's most startling, though, is how such carnality is often meshed with a hyperbolic, almost slapstick sense of humor. When Sang-Hyun "feeds," we find him lying on the floor of a hospital room, taking pulls from a patient's IV like he's sipping a milkshake through a straw. And when he and Tae-Joo sleep together for the first time, she literally has to pry his stubborn virginal legs apart to make it happen.

Park has dubbed his own film a "vampire melodrama," and there is definitely a strong classical Hollywood influence at play here. Tae-Joo is a modern update on the femme fatale of the '40s, right down to the way she convinces Sang-Hyun to murder her husband, clutching his shoulder a la Norma Desmond. And as in the best traditional noir films, it is she who steals the show and whose story we ultimately remember most. This is due in no small part to Kim, who is both classic and creative in her journey from a ghost of a young girl to a delightfully manipulative monster of a woman. To think that this young actor's career has only just begun is truly exciting.

Certain viewers may find it jarring to watch Thirst seamlessly shift from horror to dark comedy to suspense thriller to romance, but its themes of morality, guilt, and redemption are consistent and utterly powerful. For this reason alone, it is worth seeing, preferably on the big screen for the sake of Park's meticulous compositions, and if you're anything like me, you'll crave a second viewing as soon as the end credits roll.

Written by: Caitlin Graham, August 18th 2009