Bernie

What happens when someone so caring, considerate and beloved by his community, who has helped so many people through rough periods in their lives, gets together with the least liked and hated person in the community? A shocking tragic comedy that leaves a community divided in more ways than one.

I had a great time watching this movie, which is probably one of the most unusual films I’ve seen. You think you’re watching a romantic comedy until you realize what you’ve actually been watching is …well, let’s just say, far more interesting.

A kindhearted stranger arrives in a small Texas town to work at the local funeral home and quickly ingratiates himself among its citizens, especially the widows of the town, with his unabashed positive and compassionate attitude. Bernie tries to be all things to all people and genuinely loves helping folks and makes no judgments even when confronted with the most cantankerous and reviled citizen of the town of Carthage.

This has got to be one of the most outrageous films I’ve ever seen. This movie is part documentary and part drama but you don’t realize that until the credits role. The less you know about this film the better you will enjoy it. So stop reading now if you don’t want to spoil the surprise. I knew this was based on a true story going into it, but it still amazed me to see that the actual people from the town had been such a big part of the film. 

Done partly in a reality show style, the town’s people tell us everything we know about the likeable Bernie Tiede, played by Jack Black, through interview footage, and in-between their commentary we watch as the drama unfolds.  It all seems a little too rosy and something in the back of your mind is telling you that Bernie is a little too generous for his own good.

Things slowly become more sinister and the story gets stranger as it goes along, until you just can’t stop laughing at the absurdity of it. And then when you think you’ve just seen a wonderful tragic comedy with one of the best performances by Jack Black, it’s revealed that we’ve been watching the real citizens of the town as they recount their own experiences. At that point the audience is just in shock and amazement and realize that the adage ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ was never more apt than in this hilarious film.

Texas born, Independent filmmaker Richard Linklater, who is known for his innovative techniques and pushing the boundaries of film by mixing genres as in Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006) and Fast Food Nation (2006), does a magnificent job of seamlessly integrating interview footage with dramatized footage, making the movie seem just like a comedy about typical gossiping small town characters, while revealing the darker side of human nature. 

It all pays off in the end with a surprisingly unusual twist and some poignant revelations about the American justice system and the darker nature of a quiet and friendly community.  

JP

Fish Tank

Fish Tank (2009) is not an easy film to watch but it’s very truthfully told and it will be difficult to find another film as mesmerizing and powerful as this one. 

This is a heart-wrenchingly honest portrayal of life in a low income housing estate in Essex, England, where a young single mother lives in a small apartment with her two children. While dating young men for sex and food, she neglects her two daughters who end up angry, resentful and mostly fend for themselves. 

This grim coming-of-age story is told from the point of view of the older troubled daughter Mia, played by Katie Jarvis, who is fifteen and loves dancing to hip hop music. When her mother’s new boyfriend, played by Michael Fassbender, who was recently seen in Inglourious Basterds (2009), X-Men: First Class (2011) and Prometheus (2012), shows up to stay with them, he has a stabilizing effect on this cruel all female family who are constantly bickering with each other.

Filmed documentary style, Fish Tank is a brutally heartbreaking depiction of the bitter reality in a dysfunctional family incapable of showing each other any love or compassion. It will leave you shaking your head in horror at the loss of innocence at such a tender age.

The mother, played by Kierston Wareing, seems to resent having to raise these kids by herself and, unable to cope with the responsibility, she takes out her frustrations on them. Drunk and partying most of the time, her only concern is for satisfying her own needs. There are no tender moments between the girls in this family but when a charming young adult male shows up, the girls are on their best behavior.  He seems to have a calming effect on the family and treats them each with respect and understanding, something that the daughters are not familiar with but they enjoy his company if only for the fact that their mother seems more civil when he’s around.

Award winning UK writer and director Andrea Arnold, using her own experiences, knows this harsh world inside out and grew up under similar circumstances shown in the film, with a single mother raising four children by herself in a housing block. She is passionate and non-judgmental while telling powerful stories of hardship that she has experienced first-hand. 

All the performances are absolutely believable and you may feel uncomfortable as you are getting a look into a very private world of abuse and neglect where one wishes one could intervene but are helpless as the characters careen toward self-destruction. There is a somewhat hopeful note at the end but it comes with an emotionally devastating sadness. It took me a while to recover from this film but it will stay with me for a long time to come.

Andrea Arnold is a promising new talented director to watch out for. She has already won an Academy award for her third short film called Wasp (2005), which is also about a single mother raising four children while desperately trying to date men and survive on almost nothing, as well as two Jury prizes at the Cannes film festival for her first two feature films Red Road (2006) and Fish Tank. 

All her short films are included on the new Criterion Blu-ray edition of the film and are all worth seeing and just as strong and well performed as the feature. Don’t miss this amazing experience.

JP

The Darjeeling Limited

Family dysfunction and disconnection after the passing of a parent is at the forefront of this whimsical comedy about three brothers, played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman, who have recently lost their father and are brought together to bond while going on a spiritual journey via a train trip through India. 

Like a dream vacation, this movie is fun, relaxing and caters to your every need. One of the many pleasures of this film is the non-verbal expressions and body language used to communicate volumes between the characters. Much of what the characters feel is not expressed in words, and this film takes full advantage of the cast’s abilities of physical expression and deadpan humor.

The journey of self-discovery; people who travel to far away destinations to find new truths about themselves, is a powerful theme in many of our most memorable films, beginning with non-other than The Wizard of Oz (1939), and include such favorites as The Razor’s Edge (1984), Pleasantville (1998), Enlightenment Guaranteed (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), and the Wes Anderson film The Darjeeling Limited (2007), who also directed Fantastic Mr.Fox (2009) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012).

These soul searching films often take place in exotic other worldly locations like Japan, India or alternate reality worlds as in The Wizard of Oz and Pleasantville. Many people seeking spiritual enlightenment often end up in Japan or India as in The Razor’s Edge, Enlightenment Guaranteed, Lost in Translation and The Darjeeling Limited. But wherever the location, whether physical or psychological, the story follows a similar pattern; a crisis in one’s routine life leads to questioning of one’s existence and the hero leaves the familiar path, traveling into the unknown to seek out the truth. After many trials confronting inner demons, their understanding of the world and themselves is changed and expanded, resulting in a new beginning.

Soon after settling into their cabins on The Darjeeling Limited the animosity between the brothers quickly becomes apparent, manifesting itself as the selfish brothers, who are carrying a lot of emotional baggage, suffer from typical western vices like emotional immaturity, addiction to pharmaceutical drugs, materialism while fighting over their dead father’s belongings and mistrust of each other as they secretly plan to abandon the journey in case the situation becomes unbearable.

Visually, we get to see some beautiful Indian scenery along the rail tracks as the train slowly ambles onward past remote farming villages, representing the journey of life we must all travel. The interior of the train itself is spectacularly decorated to evoke a long lost era of colonial India. Not only being one of the most visually pleasing films to watch, it’s also a treat for the ears as we get to hear a surreal mix of traditional Indian music from the Merchant Ivory and Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s films with 60s pop songs by the British rock band The Kinks thrown in. 

As the family conflicts erupt between the brothers, they are thrown off the train and thus symbolically leave the path to start the journey toward enlightenment. While abandoned in the desert, a situation eventually presents itself during which the brothers come together to engage in their first unselfish act to save the lives of three village children, which allows them to finally connect with each other and let go of their past emotional baggage. Their itinerary abandoned, and emotional scars revealed, they finally learn to trust and respect each other as they grow into mature unselfish adults and the family unity is restored. 

I highly recommend you watch the director approved special edition Criterion version of this film on Blu-ray, as it contains a truly amazing and incredible behind-the-scenes documentary by Barry Braverman. This visually striking documentary about the making of the film is definitely worth seeing and should not be missed. I also recommend the motion picture soundtrack to this film, which contains some excellent music.

JP

Moonrise Kingdom

Clearly our childhood experiences and sexual awakening are being mined by many filmmakers for its rich potential for humor and depth of emotions when innocence is lost as we fumble toward adulthood. These stories also expose the disillusionment with the unfair world of adults that children look up to and depended on for security and safety. 

The growing number of nostalgic coming-of-age and idealistic young love comedies like Submarine (2011) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) released recently, all feature adolescent teens that are labeled as difficult or outcasts while dealing with puberty. These wonderful films, when done right, are able to deal with this delicate subject realistically with sensitivity and humor. 

These types of films became popular in European cinema back in the late 60s and early 70s with such classics as Maurice Pialat’s Naked Childhood (1968) Louise Malle’s Murmur of the Heart (1971), and Waris Hussein's Melody (1971) but one of the earliest films that I remember seeing in this more recent trend goes as far back as 1996 with an independent gem called Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996) and continued with such heartfelt, feel good films as Malèna (2000), Raising Victor Vargas (2002), The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2006), Son of Rambow (2007), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), Terri (2010) and Super 8 (2011). All these films are about awkward teens or pre-teens who are struggling with their first encounters with love and sex while dealing with peers and adults.

Wes Anderson, who has made a career out of odd overachieving characters with such films as Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), has finally brought his unique sensibility and cinematic style to this much loved genre. His new film, Moonrise Kingdom, very successfully evokes the best qualities of the coming-of-age/young romance film while adding his own unique voice and style. 

In the movie, a nerdy bright young orphan boy scout, who could be a precursor to Max Fischer in Rushmore, makes elaborate arrangements to run away with a local girl during a boy scout summer camp on the remote island of New Penzance off the coast of New England in 1965. Having previously met at a church function, the two romantic loners decide to secretly rendezvous and live in the wilderness, which leads to a hilarious manhunt by the local police, the entire scout camp troupe and the local residents.

This movie is really about our first awkward steps toward adulthood and how as children we role-play the relationships we see in the adult world. The love that the two young rebels feel for each other is so obsessive that they seem more mature than their age would suggest. Much like the Welsh movie Submarine, the two lovers briefly escape the controlled world of adults to freely engage in spontaneous and uninhibited courtship. But the complicated inept and precarious world of adults constantly threatens to destroy our heroes’ idealistic carefree sanctuary.

Wes Anderson’s unique child’s-eye-view style of storytelling is well suited to this type of story which feels more like an amateur stage play. In the style of a children’s play, there is a narrator that talks to the audience and explains the background history of the events we are about to see. The characters talk to each other in a stiff expressionless monotone while standing face to face, with the camera squarely placed where the audience would be. This all gives the impression of watching self-conscious amateur actors performing in a summerstock theatre play. 

The music also fits in with this amateur play theme and the big action set pieces are implied, in other words, they happen off camera and we only see the aftermath, which can be quite funny since we can only imagine what must have happened, but despite this, the movie builds to a surprisingly satisfying climax.

JP