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A Serious Man (2009)

Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg

**1/2

I can't in good conscience suggest that A Serious Man fails in any way because I know the work of Joel and Ethan Coen well enough to realize that everything (very likely) worked exactly how they intended. That having been said, A Serious Man doesn't top my list of great Coen films. I found it all too frustrating to watch most of the time and that isn't necessarily because Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg) can't seem to have anything go right for him, but rather because the idiots that surround him just seem to make everything worse.

I think A Serious Man is about the ups and downs of life. This is why we're tossed right into the mix of Larry's life (opening fable excluded) and suffer through it with him until the end when we don't really get the closure for which we're looking. The Coen's aren't trying to suggest that life sucks, then we die but rather there are stretches of time within one's life when everything seems to be going wrong. Larry is the exaggerated example of this. The less exaggerated and more common example is the story told of Dr. Sussman, a dentist who's life gets complicated because someone has an engraving on the inside of his teeth. Dr. Sussman becomes so fixated on his mystery that it effects his life and a more dramatic way than should have been necessary. Larry does everything he can to prevent his life from continuing its downward spiral but it doesn't mattter.

It must be mentioned that Stuhlbarg is great in this film as Larry Gopnick. Its no surprise that the Coen's found the perfect actor to play a part in their film but Stuhlbarg portrayal of Gopnick I think should be in the same conversation as Goodman's Walter Sobchack, Macy's Jerry Lundegard and dare I say, Bridges' The Dude. Put these performances in a line, Stuhlbarg would likely come in last but its a perfect performance in a Coen movie.

If I'm being completely honest, I didn't really like A Serious Man. Just because I'm certain the Coen's accomplished everything they set out to do, doesn't mean it worked for me. I found myself often bored and even more often fed up with what Larry was going through. Had he just been having a rough patch in his life I think I may have sympathized with him but when he continuously looks for guidence from the least qualified to give guidence people in the world I kind of wonder if what he's dealing with is a direct result of the company he's kept. So many of these characters are not characters at all. Like the Minnesota residents in Fargo the supporting cast are mostly caricatures.... just Jewish instead of Midwestern.

As I touched on, Gopnick himself could be considered a caricature. He's an exaggerated version of and average Joe with the weight of the world on his shoulders. To make this work however, I needed to feel a little bit more compassion and sympathy for him. To keep my attention for the whole more, I kind wanted some light at the end of the tunnel for Gopnick. I chalk A Serious Man up as one of the Coen's setup films for their next masterpiece. I'm hoping Burn After Reading and A Serious Man are the Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers prior to No Country for Old Men.

Mulholland Dr. (2001)

Directed by: David Lynch
Starring: Naomi Watts

****1/2

It took careful attention, a google search for an explanation and then a second viewing for me to understand, appreciate and dare I say, love David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. All I can do is hang my head in embarrassment for my endless claims that the film is pretentious, confusing just to be confusing and could not possibly be as good as so many claim that it is. It had been several years since I first saw Mulholland Dr, after watching for a second time, it was about an hour before watching it a third.

First, what keeps Mulholland Dr. from being perfect, then what makes it great. Despite the fact that I understand the movie now and appreciate what Lynch did, anytime I need to research an explanation of a movie, it is going to hurt that movie's overall rating in my book. That having been said, had this film had a little bit more exposition, had it given its audience a little bit less credit, had it explained everything a little more than not at all, without of course giving up everything that makes it what it is, this could perhaps be one of the best movies ever made. Could that have been done I wonder? What this film is, is as much a mystery as the one the characters are trying to solve. The non-chronological timeline of events leaves you scratching your head but it also divulges information appropriately when necessary. Who these characters are is just as important as who they are not. What we see, is just as important as what we don't see. Without these very intentional techniques used by Lynch, the mood, the pacing and the quality of this movie would be effected. Call it a dream, call it a puzzle with missing pieces, call it pretenious if you really want to, but Lynch never made this movie for people who need to know exactly what's going on, just as Kubrick didn't make The Shining for that audience. Something doesn't have to make sense to be great I guess.

The first hour and forty or so minutes of this movie is film noir at its best. Even the subtle over-acting from Naomi Watts and Laura Herring were reminiscent of the dames from the 40s, 50s and 60s. The lighting was shadowy with deep contrasts. The music, which was used as perfectly as I've seen in a long time, said everything it was supposed to say. This hour and forty minutes is filmmaking perfected. Then, the other shoes falls. Suddenly everything seems backwards. For the next forty-five minutes of the film its difficult to appreciate the filmmaking because the story which I was following so closely and enjoying so thoroughly is a mess. Everytime I thought I might have an idea of what is going on, something else happens to prove my theory wrong. Having read an explanation, or a theory at the very least, I do believe that what I watched does makes sense, but its tricky and its distracting.

So to enjoy Mulholland Dr. all one needs to do is watch the first half of it. To really appreciate the movie for what it is, it might require some help and certainly needs repeated viewings. So as a whole, I'm on board. Mulholland Dr. is a great movie. Piece by piece, however, how does Mulholland Dr. work? Like any movie that needs to be watched a few times to really recognize how each aspect plays in, Lynch does well to tie things together but I wasn't sure if it was all necessary. And if it was necessary, I wasn't always sure if it worked with the movie as a whole. In other words, yes, there seemed to be a reason for everything but that didn't always mean that something needed to be in the movie. Even upon rewatching the film with a better idea of what was going on, I still questioned how certain scenes were important to the overall story.

It was once a mystery to me how a film so confusing could be considered so great. Now I'm simply fascinated by the mystery that is this film and the one that's within it. It was impossible to turn off from start to finish. Its a challenging movie, not in content but by the way it doesn't allow its audience to take a break. If you miss anything, you could miss out on one of the many aspects of this movie that really make it great.

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Directed by: Errol Morris

****

Morris' visual style in The Thin Blue Line is unlike any conventional documentary approach. Although his interviews are shot straight on, head and shoulders, there is a way his camera has of framing his subjects so that we look at them very carefully, learning as much by what we see as by what we hear. The words of Roger Ebert describe this film better than I can try to do but my using his quote goes beyond my brain's laziness. The intensity brought forth through the interviews, and really, the only documentary aspect of this film, resonates after seeing it. There's nothing too frightening about these characters but reading Ebert's review just minutes after watching this film made me realize how much I kept trying to look harder at these people, wanting to learn more about what made them tick, wanting to hear more than what they were saying.

Some time ago, I watched a Charlie Rose interview with Charles Manson. Manson's crazy is evident and that creates an intensity that resonates even after watching the interview. Just hearing his views on the world make you think about your own and wonder how they can be so different (or the same, muahaha! - just kidding). The Thin Blue Line gives us interviews with characters who are much more like ourselves than Charles Manson, but the gravity of the situation about which they speak and who they are and why they do things really makes you want to look deep into their eyes and see their soul.

The Thin Blue Line is a documentary that's been starring back at me from my instant Netflix que for a while now. I've heard little bits about it and my always mistaking it for a prequal to Terrance Malik's war film always had me this close to giving it a watch. Finally sitting down to do so, brought with it, somewhat high expectations. Frustration lessened those expectations as there are aspects of this film, especially at the beginning that are kind of confusing. However, its really only getting a grasp on who's who. Once that's nailed down, its a relatively simple film to follow. Randall Adams is one of Morris' two primary subjects for interviews. Adams is the one that this film all but proves innocent of a crime for which he is serving a life sentence. David Harris is the man who probably committed the crime. He too is in prison, on death row for an unrelated murder.

The film teaters on the injustices of the Dallas court system during Adams trial but its more about people. Its about ordinary people mixed up in a real situation. Its not an extraordinary situation by most accounts... the idea that Morris we now know came within days of being executed before being exonerated after this film's release, is extraordinary but really we are fed a court case that convicted a man based on the facts that it had. Whether or not those facts were true or reliable remains to be seen. There are times when Morris suggests that the court system is corrupt and looking for a hard conviction for a cop killer. He points out that the District Attourney wanted a 28-year old man (Adams) so he could give him the death sentence rather than a 16-year old (Harris) who might get some juvenille detention time. Either way, this film stays away from biased opinions and really just feeds you the facts from every angle.

Interviews and photographs are mixed together with somewhat lazy but important reanactments of the murder. We see Dallas Police Officer Robert Woods approach the car and then five shots fired at him and we see this from every possible angle. Some of which give you a better idea of who is responsible, none of which convince you beyond a reasonable doubt. There are aspects of his filmmaking that appear as if a student was behind the camera and there are others that look a little bit too eighties to feel real but as a whole, the dramatizations were effective. However, for that effectiveness, I give more credit to Philip Glass' chilling score. I've yet to read anything about this film that leaves Glass unmentioned and I won't either. Documentaries so often inform, occasionally entertain, but seldom do they create a mood for themselves. Glass' music compliments the intensity of Morris' subject matter.

Perhaps Morris' film aided in the exoneration of an innocent man but I think it also gave an example of how a documentary can be done. No where does it say a documentary can't be creative. Well, I guess that's not true as the film was unable to contend for a best Documentary Oscar since it had fictional scenes. Either way, the creativity that Morris blends with the real drama that are these people's lives is compelling enough for at least one viewing... but possible a few.

Beer Wars (2009)

Directed by: Anat Baron

**1/2

I'm not really sure what Anat Baron was trying to say in her documentary Beer Wars. Maybe it was that big businesses hurt the American working man. Maybe its that the bigger the business the worse the product. I really don't know. This documentary lacked specifics and at times direction. However, what it did provide is some interesting information and even if some of that information was already kind of common knowledge, and even if some of it didn't seem relevant towards any type of cause or message, most of it was still interesting and that's what made Beer Wars an interesting documentary.

Anat Baron did her best Michael Moore impression while making this film and tried to star in it. Fortunately, there wasn't quite enough for her to do so she was never really in the way. The highlight of this informational video was the interviews she conducted with several independent brewery founders all over the country. These men and women, once upon a time, struggled to compete with Coors, Miller and Busch and while they still compete, I'm not sure they still struggle. I admit I know a little more about the beer industry than the average Joe but I'm far from an expert. The little that I do know however, allows me to suggest that this film would have been much more suitable for release maybe ten years ago. This isn't to suggest that big business doesn't continue to have a stranglehold on American consumers. It is to suggest that people know are fully aware that they get what they pay for.

Not every independent brewery is Sam Adams of Dogfish Head. These are probably the exceptions rather than the rule. Co-founder of Sam Adams and now CEO of the barely functioning New Century Brewing Company Rhonda Kallman experiences the everyday struggle of financing her business and getting her product to consumers. However, put one of her beers in front of someone and have that person choose between her Moonshot beer and a Bud Light... people may be inclined to try hers. Its no different than putting a good burger in front of someone next to a McDonald's cheese burger. If they have to pay $1 or $9, they might pick McDonald's but if they want a good burger, they'll take the other one. In short, people know they are drinking an inferior product when they choose Bud, Coors, and Miller but its an issue of cost.

Beer Wars is quick to point out that the craft brewing industry is on the rise in America. It can't and won't ever compete with the mass production by the major breweries but I'm not sure its trying to. If it were, it'd be easy enough to sell the rights to their product and slap an Anhauser-Busch label on the side of their six-packs. They are in the business of making good beer. They are more comparable to artists, than entrepanuers. They are the indie world of film, not Hollywood. This isn't to say that Sam Calagione wouldn't like it if people bought cases of Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA for their Superbowl parties, but it's like more important to him if a few people enjoy what they are drinking when they spend $12 on a six-pack. It all comes back to, we get what we pay for and this is something that American consumers understand in this day and age better than anything.

Had this film been released in a time when people were still being duped by clidesdales into thinking that its classy to drink Budweiser, I think there would have been a better message here. Instead, its almost like there has been two seperate industries created. Yes, they compete in some sense, but they also have different markets. Like I said, this film has some interesting information but it fails to cross the treshold into complete documentary. Relaying a message that isn't there makes you seem biased. This film isn't biased as it has the opinions from several different sources, but I kept asking myself, what are they arguing about?