That’s one of my favorite lines from the new movie from Writer/Director Wes Anderson, FANTASTIC MR. FOX, based on the story by Roald Dahl. A, well, fantastic effort on just about every level. This is probably my new favorite movie of Anderson’s, the story deftly holds on to it’s origins of being from the mind of Roald Dahl, and most importantly, it’s just pretty cussing cute! With a voice cast featuring the likes of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, and lots more (including Mario Batali!!)
I’ve long felt that Anderson’s movies, while all fun in their own right, were essentially little boy exercises in playing. Whether it’s BOTTLE ROCKET, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, or even the closest in what I mean, represented in RUSHMORE. The stories are all about men being immature, idiosyncratic and rebels for their own causes; which is basically what little boys play at, when playing cowboys and indians, GI Joes, or any other backyard activity. We’re the cleverest, most-invulnerable creatures in the world – especially if we have an audience of in awe friends and younger siblings. And FANTASTIC MR. FOX, fits in with these ideals, but also presents a new maturity.
Mr. Fox starts off the movie as the best chicken hunter of the forest, and when he and his wife – Mrs. Fox – get caught in a steel trap, she reveals she’s pregnant and that Mr. Fox has to stop being risky and get a real job. We then cut to two years later (or 12 fox years), where Mr. Fox writes a column for the local newspaper – which no one reads – and he starts to feel an itch. First it is scratched in the form of needing a better home. Instead of the hole in the ground that he and his wife, and their adolescent son Ash (voiced by RUSHMORE’s Jason Schwartzman) to a large tree where you can see the entire valley. Then comes the further plotting of pulling one last big job, in three phases. This job is to break into each of the three local farmers barns, cellars and freezers, and steal their wares.
How this movie differs and is more mature, in my view, from Anderson’s previous movies is that we get an acknowledgment that these characters are in-fact not mature adults, because well, they’re wild animals. It’s a strange thing, but in that revelation, it brings these anthropomorphized animals into the realm of the adult. Grown ups enjoy playing cowboys and indians, GI Joe’s and whatever else. We just tend to do it either more lethally – through actual wars – or find a way of rebelling on our own, but can’t admit that yes, we are still kids inside. And in some part, wild animals of our own kind.
The movie is animated with stop-motion puppets. A little more in the vein of the Rankin-Bass Christmas cartoons from long-ago, than the smoother animation of the Henry Selick, CORALINE, crowd. We see the fur on the animals move in strange ways that is the effect of moving the puppets and taking separate, single-frame photos of them. And it does take a little getting used to, but the way the movie starts by throwing us straight in to the style of the movie – plotting out the Foxes breaking into a farm to nab some squabs (pigeon-like birds).
The style of the movie is the extreme to which Anderson has become known for, with the elaborate plans, funny costumes, and dancing (don’t you remember the Steve Zissou dance sequence?). I also kind of feel like the humor works here a little better than in Anderson’s other movies. Maybe it’s another side of the immaturity in his stories, but sometimes it’s hard to accept living people doing some of the things that they do in say THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. But, here seeing a fox explain to us that beagles love blueberries, or the fun ways that the animals smile at each other by baring their teeth, all adds some great humor.
The voice acting is all fantastic, from the people I listed above to the not headlining names, but still great coups to have in this little movie; like Michael Gambon, Brian Cox, Jarvis Cocker, and Willem Dafoe (probably one of the greatest characters/acting performances of the movie).
It’s a great movie, and I hope that it enjoys lots of success in the beginning of this 2009 holiday season.
Today, unintentionally turned into “war movie daY”, with two – newer – releases from the bygone era of 2008. One is a big-budget, star studded suspense thriller about an event that we already kind of know how it ends; the other is a docu-drama about a war that very few people (in America) probably know that much about, and it happens to also be animated. I do have to admit that I have a predilection towards war movies and therefore these two were pretty high on my “to watch” list, but I never managed to see either in the theater.
Going bigger first, we’ve got the Bryan Singer directed, Christopher McQuarrie written movie about a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler by commanders in his own government and military. The two big draws to this movie (one good and one…questionable) was it was the reteaming of the writer/director team that brought us THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and I have to say that they really held up their end of the deal! The other, more questionable and in some cases controversial interesting aspect to this movie was casting Tom Cruise in the lead role as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the military commander put in charge of the assassination plot. For his part, despite being the only person in the film to not have any kind of European accent, Cruise did pretty well. It was helped by the almost uncanny natural resemblance that he has to the real life person.
The movie features an all-star – mostly British – cast, ranging from Eddie Izzard to Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branagh. Some of the stand-out roles were Tom Wilkinson playing the opportunist Nazi General, Friedrich Fromm; who was willing to be in the resistance only once it proved to be a success. The other standout was Thomas Kretschmann as Major Remer, who is the head of the reserve forces in Berlin, and are the soldiers that are to be used by the conspirators to take control of the city’s government. But, really just about everyone that appears on-screen, from Stauffenberg’s wife (played by Carice von Houten) to the gate Sergeant Kolbe (played by Wotan Wilke Möhring – who I just saw in the movie ANTIBODIES, which I still feel like I might need to write about), who is so close to retaining Stauffenberg after his assassination attempt.
The story itself, as I mentioned, we kind of already know the ending to – as everyone knows that Hitler survived until the end of the European conflict of WWII, so this movie ends in failure. It also kind of botches the montage at the end to give these brave people the just due that they deserved in a movie about this endeavor. But, other than that, it plays out as an excellent suspense, political thriller, with secret meetings to plan how the government will run after Hitler’s death, to who will be loyal to which side and of course the planning on how the assassination will take place. There are some great moments with Bill Nighy’s character – General Olbricht – who really comes off in this movie as a coward and in a few moments you think that he’s going to be the cause of the whole house of cards collapsing – and in one instance, he kind of is – but it’s a great performance and while I have no idea if it’s realistic in any way, it added to the drama that made me forget, “oh yeah, they’re still going to lose”. But, it is in the way that the whole thing fails that becomes the crux of the movie (again, I don’t know the true story so, I don’t know what’s real and what’s Hollywood), where it really comes down to the fact that if any one of a many number of things had gone a different way; history might be completely different.
There is of course, a number of things to discuss about Tom Cruise’s performance in this movie. I stated one, already – the actual resemblance between the actor and his real-life counterpart. The other fascinating thing is that this movie marks a decision on Cruise’s part that we’ve not seen since BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (and kind of in TROPIC THUNDER), and that is the heavy prosthetic application to scar and disfigure the actor. In the beginning of the movie, when we see Stauffenberg in North Africa, he and his soldiers are attacked and in the action Stauffenberg is shot and blown up. This leads to him, during the rest of the movie only having one hand, three fingers on the other and only one eye. The makeup effects are all great and very believable in the movie. It’s only in a couple moments in the movie that they’re made explicitly noticeable. I especially liked the seeming CGI, to make his one eye – when having a glass replica inserted in the socket, stay still when the other eye would shift. And the last thing to mention, is that would really have been nice to have Cruise at least attempt to put on an accent that matched the rest of his co-stars. I’m only asking for a slight change, maybe of a few words; like he did for his role in FAR AND AWAY, where he was supposed to be Irish, but only managed an accent mostly when he whispered. Speaking of accents, it was interesting to see – or hear, I guess – that all of the conspirators, or people probably to fall in line with the coup, all had British accents; while anyone who was clearly on the Nazi side – or likely to fall on that side of the scuffle – had German accents (and were mostly played by Germans, with David Bamber who is British, playing Adoph Hitler).
The filmmaking itself is top-notch. There were parts in the movie where I had to question whether I knew this was a Bryan Singer movie. Not that any of his movies have been bad, or really shown any kind of singular directorial style, but I was really surprised and pleased by the look and feel of the movie. The biggest drawback for me, was the score; which ran really close – if not outright being exactly the same – as John William’s work in the movie MUNICH. It became really bothersome, but I do have to say that that was the same kind of tension that worked in both movies…so, whatever.
So, overall, a great movie with a cast so large that you mostly only get to know the characters by the actor’s names – and Hitler – but well worth seeing.
The other movie to talk about is about the Lebanon War, that took place in the early 1980’s between Lebanon and Israel. I have to admit to not knowing much about this conflict, or what lead up to it; and the movie coming from an Israeli, who apparently actually was a part of this war would be more suspect if the movie didn’t come down fairly anti-war. The filmmaker behind the movie – WALTZ WITH BASHIR – is Ari Folman, and the movie is actually him talking about memories of the war with other people; based on the idea that he has a strange vision – as opposed to memory – of a certain massacre that took place, but he can’t remember what is real and what is just his mind making up details to fill in the void. The interviews, were apparently the result of ads placed of ex-soldiers who wanted to tell their stories, and then Ari would film their interviews and then it would all be rendered as animation later.
The animation for the movie is pretty good. It has similarities in things like WAKING LIFE and the movie RENAISSANCE – which is a French animated movie, done in high contrast black and white. Bashir uses color, very effectively, but the animation is very solid and off-putting, but helps with a lot of the settings. The opening sequence is especially excellent with it’s pack of running, wild dogs speeding through a city and knocking over whatever’s in their way.
The movie goes through the story, from different points of view – telling the diverging stories of soldiers who were attacked in a vineyard by little kids with RPG’s; to a soldier who escaped from his tank, only to hide behind some rocks til nightfall and then swam three miles through the Mediterranean to another shore where his fellow army was and finally to the realization of what happened during the massacre that Ari had blocked and what he saw that night. This leads to a powerful ending, and the only part of the movie that is not animated. It shows live action of a war-zone, and more importantly the cruelty and horror that we visit upon one another. It’s awful and yet sends a very strong message that this is wrong – from any point of view – and is a human problem.
The movie also has some fun, and humorous moments; including a musical number or two – that tend to not end happily – and a funny moment where we see how the Israeli army has taken over a palace in Beirut and have found the early 80’s cheesy German porn – and we get a graphic, albeit animated, showing of it. And of course there’s the titular waltz, which is more of a fantastical memory of the main character, and the Bashir of the title is represented only in posters that hang on the walls surrounding our soldiers (or on the t-shirts, rings, flags, and whatever else the Lebanese could seemingly print the face of Bachir Gemayel, who was the President-Elect at the time of the war, and was assassinated soon after taking power. And it was this assassination, that seemingly lead to the massacre that this movie is centered around.
Also Recommended:
DEFIANCE
THE PIANIST
EMPIRE OF THE SUN
PERSEPOLIS (which I’ve already discussed, previously)
MUNICH
Cartoons, like fairy tales and nursery rhymes have gone through many iterations in the time since their creation. They’ve contained subversive (for their time) material – such as Betty Boop and Fritz the Cat – as well as taught us (as kids and those that have stuck around, adults too) lessons on life, friendship and the value of not mail-ordering things from ACME. Over the past decade or so, animation has moved beyond the near century of 2-d, or flat, animation that has dominated this field; and the best example of 3-d animation – or Computer generated, is actually a better and more acurate way of putting it – would be PIXAR. A company that was founded after being the defunct and sold off animation department of Lucasfilms (yeah, that guy that did some Star Wars movie). With their release of a number of animated shorts and then their feature debut, TOY STORY – PIXAR revolutionized (American made) animation.
Their movies have been sold as “for kids” but have contained as much material – albeit still sanitized and clean – for adults as for younger people. In recent years, especially after having brought in a filmmaker who has specialized in creating animation that was geared a little more towards adults – Brad Bird, who had done the THE FAMILY DOG section of the Spielberg-produced AMAZING TALES series as well as the still-underrated classic THE IRON GIANT – with their movies THE INCREDIBLES and RATATOUILLE; and then in 2008 releasing Andrew (FINDING NEMO) Stanton’s WALL-E. But, this post isn’t about PIXAR – as much as it could be, really. It’s about two movies that have recently (within the past two years) that are independently created – and not only that, created by two women – and not distributed widely (and in one’s case, not at all, so far) and carry very grown up tones.
PERSEPOLIS is based on a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and it’s about her life growing up in Iran during the 1980’s and moving around Europe to get away from the over-bearing government of the Shah and fundamentalist Muslims that took over the country. The movie is created using a stark black and white palette, with interspersed bouts of color. There are fantastic elements, such as God appearing to Marjane to explain, or extricate “his” responsibility in the terror and horrors that happen to man. The animation also works back and forth between being a cartoony-realistic, sort of roto-scoped effect – where the characters seem to move too smoothly and humanly to have been done from imagination – to the down-right exaggerated cartoony style of Bugs Bunny.
We see Marjane as a little girl, who is often told by grown-ups, or overheard when she’s not meant to be listening, about the things that are happening in the government and how people are being taken away and jailed for long periods of time. Like her grandfather and Uncle Anouche, who comes home after being gone for years and he explains to her what is happening and what he went through. And he tells Marjane that she has to carry on these stories. Then there’s her grandmother, who seems free-spirited and non-political. She enjoys putting fragrent flowers in her bra and smoking and tells Marjane that she’ll meet a lot of jerks in life and that her first marriage is just practice for her second one. The movie is full of interesting characters, or people that we’re lead to believe will be in Marjane’s life for a long time, only to have them leave either on their own; be taken away by authorities or chase Marjane away. We see her as a young precocious child, as a quiet and out of her element (in Germany) teenager who gets into punk rock and then as a hippy, only to realize that what they’re standing for is totally the opposite of what the people she knows are fighting for their lives for in Iran.
The animation throughout is top notch. The stark black and white, adds a somber tone to the whole movie, which is deserved because even in the high notes, we know that this is not a fairy tale and stories like this don’t have “and they lived happily ever after” at the end. The acting of the characters is also really good, with the grandmother as the most memorable and the interesting portrayal of God or whoever, is also a nice take. The voice-acting, and performances are hard to gauge, because the movie is in French – with the exception being when Marjane sings Eye of the Tiger – but just the tone of the person that provides Marjane’s voice as a teenager and adult has moments of being very grating and even not knowing much french, seemed incomprehensible.
I have to admit that I’m pretty ignorant of the whole Iran-Iraq war of the 1980’s, and the Shah and other troubles that have occurred in that country – and what I do know comes with the American slant, which interestingly the US is pretty much non-existent in this movie – but the one thing that kind of bothered me was still the polemic speeches delivered to Marjane, particularly as a kid, and seeing how even in one scene she goes from vehemently defending the Shah to denouncing him. Because of what the grown-ups around her say. This isn’t meant as a defense for anyone, but it just stuck out to me on how adults form their kids to follow the principles and doctrine that they follow.
Overall, I really liked the movie though. I think that the message of staying true to who you are – and as a child/teenager/young adult figuring that out is the most difficult thing some people go through – and standing up for what’s right, is a good one to teach, to kids and adults.
**Edit: I didn’t see the dubbed version of PERSEPOLIS, but apparently it has an all star cast in the English language, including: Sean Penn, Gena Rowlands and Iggy Pop. So, if you’re not into subtitles, that might be another plus in seeing the movie. Very interesting, and unusual casting there.
The other movie, SITA SINGS THE BLUES, which is a one-woman show animated movie that retells the story of the Hindu gods and their own sort of telling of THE ODYSSEY, called the RAMAYANA; along with a story of contemporary woman Nina – the artist behind the movie. The movie is created using a variety of animation techniques. There’s the “squiggle-vision” look that has been used in things like the TV Show DR. KATZ, there’s a shadow-puppet look using still images with animated mouths and eyes and different single images with the characters in different poses and also a stylized geometric look that is a couple steps up from the sort of animation used on SOUTH PARK.
The writer, director, producer, editor and “everything else unless otherwise noted” creator of the movie is Nina Paley, an Illinois born artist who currently teaches at The Parsons School of Design. Her real life story of living in San Francisco with her husband, who is offered a job in India and then after her moving there with him he dumps her via email while she’s in New York on a business trip; is the inspiration and a sub-story in the movie SITA SINGS THE BLUES. Nina is a sort of contemporary stand-in for Sita, who is the wife of demi-god, son of a king, Rama. On the day that Rama is to be crowned king by his father, he is instead banished for 14 years and his faithful and devoted wife says she’ll come along with him. So, they go into the forest outside of his kingdom, where the king of Sri Lanka (or just Lanka, as it was apparently called then) kidnaps Sita to have as his own.
Rama comes to her rescue, only to then question her loyalty and purity. Eventually he takes her back, knocks her up and then casts her away again, because he’s still not really sure whether she’s been honest with him; plus, his subjects also are disparaging towards her, and Rama wants to get along with his people. So, off she goes back into the forest, pregnant. All along, Sita during moments in these trials will break into song – provided by the singing voice of 1920’s artist Annette Hanshaw. The subject of the songs, having nothing to do with the actual plot of the Ramayana, but still dealing with the ideals of a scorned lover and being betrayed by them, is shown that this is a universal subject.
All through the movie we are told the story, and given side comments by a greek chorus – although I guess it’d be a Hindi chorus – of three shadow puppets, that argue over the details and seeming plotholes of the story involving Rama and Sita. (“Why didn’t she just ride the flying monkey back to Rama, and save all those lives and not cause a war?”) These three characters, apparently taped from a discussion of three actual people discussing the story, is very funny and really helps to take the movie to another level.
The animation works really well, the story flows -with the exception of an obviously created Intermission, designed to pad the running time and a strange psychadelic scene where we get an actual roto-scoped dancer zooming in and out of strange flames – really well. The modern day story, though, while I’m sure has profound personal meaning to the artist, doesn’t really go anywhere or clearly define what’s going on. I didn’t get that the couple was married until I looked around on the internet and was reading about the movie. It’s shown to us that the woman in the movie, is indeed the person that is creating the movie and we’re given a slight nod to the moment of inspiration that lead to the creation of what we’re watching. But, I was left a little under-whelmed with that, along with the “Squiggle-vision” which just gets a little grating after a while. (Although, for the most part those segments of the movie are short enough, that it’s not really bothersome; with the exception of wondering why smoother animation wasn’t just used!?)
Of course the fascinating thing about this movie, not only is it because of the essentially one woman show, but also in some of the setbacks that the movie has encountered. Largely, to do with the licensing of the songs sung by Hanshaw, whose music is not fully in the public-domain and the people in charge of her estate have held the movie up in being widely distributed, as well as asking for a large sum of money to allow the movie to be released on DVD. So, to this purpose, Nina Paley has released the movie, for free on the internet. The website – http://www.sitasingstheblues.com – contains links to watch the movie, to purchase merchandise and support her cause in fighting restrictive copyright law.
Hopefully, she becomes the originator in a movement to show that by releasing art to the public for use and as a basis to create from, everyone will be able to profit and not just certain people – and usually larger corporations or persons looking only for profit and not caring about the art. So, again, I urge you – whoever might be reading this – to go to the website ( http://www.sitasingstheblues.com ), watch the movie; spread the link again to whoever you know that might enjoy the movie, or the message and show support for things like this.
I have to admit that other than PIXAR’s latest batch of movies, I’ve really grown away from animation. I think that these coupld of examples of independent cinema, presenting mature content – while also not being vulgar or unsafe for children to watch – is a great way to reawaken cartoons and get it back into the mainstream and not just be a bastard format or relinquished as a “for kids only” artform, like the other serious artform of comic books have been, wrongly, in for so long (again, in America). These are not only good cartoons, they’re great movies in any format.
John R. Muth
Movies 4 me 