Sure, Dean is one of Hollywood’s chosen few who drank to drive away the drink; the sort for whom sobriety was a relationship best left estranged. How delightfully ironic, then, that for his best role since Rio Bravo, a performance that played sadly to elbow-bending expectation, Martin would not stand aside as duty called other, more hardened men to a cockpit unaffected by temptation or sin. As such, Dean would not be the blitzed and blinded passenger-in-peril, or the overwhelmed man on the ground who met his responsibility with the predictable evasions. No, Martin – Demerest, now and forever – would be clear of mind, hard of heart, and ready for anything the skies saw fit to throw his way. And at the end of Airport’s damn near 2 ½ hour running time, we would bow our heads in shame for having doubted him at all. No jumbo jet – no means of human transport, mind you – would ever come to harm with Dean Martin at the helm, not only because, for all the hysteria on display, he’s always the sanest man in the vicinity, but because he’s in love, dammit, and while he might bend this precious airplane, he’ll pull it into port for the pregnant mistress sprawled out near the rear, her eyesight, unborn child, and perfect hairdo all hanging precariously in the balance.

She is Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset), beautiful and 26 to Vernon’s fine wine 53, and while she knows she’s not quite enough to split apart his marriage, she does in fact carry his legacy. Thankfully, and matter-of-factly, his first suggestion is not the sentimental silliness that fairy tales will come true, but rather an abortion, preferably not in some back alley, but a snuffing of the fetal candle nonetheless. He’s heard rumors about Sweden, what with the United States still wandering about in a pre-Roe haze, and he’s offering his wallet as well as his decisiveness. This entire conversation – frank, adult, and defiantly cheerless – takes place before the big ship has set sail, making Vernon’s subsequent courage under fire ever the more the work of a master aviator. Lesser men might drop the damn thing into the drink to save their honor (and the likelihood of a messy divorce and/or child support), but Vernon owns up to his responsibilities. He might not drive the young lady to the very door of the Stockholm clinic, but he’ll pick up all reasonable expenses like a gentleman. So yes, Vernon is greeting this new, liberated age with but a shrug of caution, but like so few before him, he’ll assign his conquest her rightful humanity, rather than notching his belt like some coxswain caveman.

As if the heavens above saw fit to challenge Vernon’s commitment to choice, the pregnancy revelation was but the first crisis to be met with unflappable masculine resolve. There’s a man with a suitcase bomb aboard, his gutless inhumanity a perfect contrast to Vernon’s cocksure muscularity. The bomber, Van Heflin at his most simpering, is jobless, hopeless, and relentlessly henpecked; his only course remains the murder of hundreds to provide his dead-end spouse with a bit of comfort in her final, reckless days. In his way stands the Captain, but rather than resort to fists and hammer blows, he uses trickery and negotiation to end the madman’s quest. Vernon’s plea is stunningly absent the slur of hesitation, and Dino again becomes the only man on planet earth capable of reaching that rare reservoir of reasoned restraint. Some dopey, bitchy passenger – telegraphed as worthless throughout the film’s opening – interferes with the rescue, and for that moment, Vernon’s world is turned ass-over-end by the terrorist’s blast. Gwen may die, but so might they all, and that rush of feeling of losing the hottest ass in the Trans Global fleet is cast aside in favor of the cause. They’ve got to land for her, yes, but also the weak and timid and unworthy. Vernon is damn near God himself, but he’s not about to sort them out.

No, Vernon doesn’t simply put on that uniform as if shuffling off to the salt mines; he inhabits the damn thing like a second skin, polishing those wings like the Purple Heart of a D-Day survivor. And that blizzard socking in the runway? Or that massive hole in the plane’s lavatory? Parted, Moses-like, and sealed tight like the lips of a disobedient child meeting the backhand of justice. One glare, one arched eyebrow on a face browned under sun and heat lamp alike for the better part of the 20^th century, and despair turns to a hope unknown but minutes before. And those glass shards that threatened to turn his amour into a sightless, tin cup beggar? Nowhere to be found, as if danger ran to the hills, tail between its legs, once a real man strode into town. Curiously, Vernon would fail to appear in any of the Airport sequels (only George Kennedy’s Patroni would chomp cigars throughout), leading one to the inescapable conclusion that he hung up his wings, made an honest woman of Gwen, and moved to destinations unknown, forever the keeper of her kingdom. And like Sully, he went out on top – a Clemente at 3,000 – a man of yesteryear we haven’t quite encountered again.

As a lad, most of what I knew about Margaret Thatcher – or at least what I cared to know – came directly from an episode or two of the sitcom Are You Being Served?, though it’s fair to say that the show itself acted as my sole repository for the whole of British culture (then and now). In particular, I remember some such discussion about the flailing British economy, and how, in the words of the unflappably underworked Captain Peacock, the medicine of austerity and rampant budget cuts would be bitter, and yet ultimately necessary. For the class-conscious characters, Thatcherism was, in a nutshell, supported wholeheartedly by management (and those with pretensions of same) and violently opposed by the working classes, up to and including the janitorial staff. Thatcher may not have been referred to by name (simply “PM”), but we all knew the score, and on more than one occasion, the outraged sensibilities of the non-elite were pushed to consider a trip down to “#10” for a redress of grievances.

As Captain Peacock and the rest of the hardly working upper tiers looked upon with fondness the mean-spiritedness of Thatcher’s conservative government, I reasonably concluded that she was no better than our own slash-and-burn executive, and therefore would oppose her unapologetically, even if she stirred the flag-waving hearts of men with her very own Grenada. Maggie loved Ronnie, and the sexual heat was returned in kind, and I wanted both of them slapped down by the gods of justice. That both were nearly assassinated united them further in a dance with destiny, and it stands to reason that as their flesh was burned away by the sands of time, dementia and brain rot would saddle them both with golden years decidedly tarnished. Our Mr. Humphries would be pleased, or at least thankful for the cosmic balancing act. We never heard from the IRA at Grace Brothers, but it was enough to have an element of radicalism represented by the union men who fanatically insisted on tea breaks. It was the closest I would get to the front lines of the labor debate.

And now we have The Iron Lady, a film so past an expiration date that few will know (or care) about any of the players that dawdle before us, even though the screenplay will insist on catching us up to speed with that ever-grating device  called “the highlight reel”. At various points throughout this slapdash effort, we’ll see snapshots of the Blitz, riots, bombings, and military might, all with little by way of context or explanation. But The Iron Lady isn’t concerned with historical depth or insight; it’s simply a vehicle for the Paul Muni of our times, Meryl Streep, and how she can (and will!) amaze us with her immersion in what passes for character. Her portrayal of Maggie dear isn’t really acting, in a sense, as it seeks only to bring a waxwork to life, and hit all of its marks like a dutiful seal, hoping to god it gets its fishy rewards. Streep’s Thatcher is as shallow as it is preposterous, and while some may marvel at her bitter-lemon lip pursing, or bewildering Julia Child snorting, those who give a damn about cinematic competence will be embarrassed right out of their soda-stained chairs. It very well may be that Thatcher was no more than a contrived collection of tics, mannerisms, and bellowing bon mots, but I’m guessing one doesn’t become the first female to lead the British government by parroting what passes for human behavior. She just might have to back it up now and again.

The film’s central weakness – though it’s like picking a sandlot baseball team from the mouth-breathers at a special school – is that it tells its tale, such as it is, through flashbacks and bizarre hallucinations, as if what we should take from Thatcher’s life is that for all of her landmark actions, she has spent her final years yelling at her dead husband’s ghost. Yes, Denis is around (played with the usual spirit by a wasted Jim Broadbent), though he’s reduced to yet another bitchy spouse who can’t stand that his shorts go unwashed while the other pursues her ambitions. I’m sure Denis felt emasculated at every turn by the balls-out Mags, but instead of real human feeling on this matter, we get Margaret getting dressed for work, screaming at a few members of the House of Commons, and Denis sitting at home in a huff. Some might say this is a biting commentary on gender reversal (how do you like it, hubby dear?), but that would be granting the film a wit it no more possessed than Margaret herself a conscience. And as much as I roar with delight that Thatcher was reduced to a blithering idiot after bleeding the United Kingdom dry, I’d prefer a more pointed lesson. Equally, I would hate any Reagan biopic that erred on the side of the urine-soaked, lamp-tossing, rage-filled incoherence of his final decade in the sunset rather than the murderous hypocrisy of his White House years.

Predictably, there’s a feminist tilt to The Iron Lady, as if Thatcher’s gender alone is enough to warrant our awe and respect. Hammered down with relish, as if through the skull of the retarded, we see that this tenacious daughter of a grocer fought disbelieving men again and again, which makes her final victory as Prime Minister, what, something to celebrate? Ignoring her politics except for an occasional slogan, the film says that tits alone are enough to solidify Thatcher’s importance in our collective memory, which is a bit like saying we should admire Hitler because he proved that artistic failure and grim poverty are not in fact real barriers to eventually murdering half of Europe. The unknowing might sense that Thatcher doesn’t like poor people, or that the best way to save a nation is to gut everything not related to romanticizing rich union-busters, but at no point are we asked to fully interrogate what really made this woman a point of controversy throughout the world. If you oppose her, the movie argues, it is because you are a misogynist, and would prefer that the wives around the globe cook and clean and leave political wrangling to the men. It is this apolitical, heinously chickenshit attitude that consigns The Iron Lady to the ash heap of irrelevance, even if Streep’s irritating cackle of a performance is enough to place it firmly atop the list of year’s worst. I’m sick to fucking death of her stunts, and would prefer she play human beings once again not in search of an Oscar.

It was at the moment that Thatcher went to war over the three square blocks that was and is the Falkland Islands that I sensed what could have been. Rather than hem and haw through unnecessary “motivations” (Maggie loved her dad, and seemed to despise her mother, hence her desire to strap on a penis and give it a go), it would have been grand to narrow the proceedings to a Woman at War, which would go far indeed in proving that for all the feminist twaddle about women being superior at leadership, they want to blow shit up just like the rest of us. It was a hilarious side note, little explored, that at the very moment Thatcher roared that England was going bankrupt, she spent billions gassing up the moribund navy to take back what few knew had been possessed to begin with. Unemployment far too high? Strikes piling up the trash in the streets? Stage a little distraction to get the masses clucking about empire and king and country and all that, and declare a victory that, while meaningless, also ensures a few hundred state funerals that push away the rage in favor of Union Jack tears. Brilliant, Maggie dear, and perhaps her finest hour of full-tilt insanity, but this movie believes we’d rather see her have coffee with a corpse. Or smell her dead husband’s clothes like he’s a martyred gay cowboy.

In the end, The Iron Lady humiliates all involved, and it just might push me to read more about the subject at hand, if only to see a dimension beyond rude caricature. I’m not sure a fiery polemic would have been any better, but at least it would have represented a perspective; a desire to push the audience into reasoning that not all historical figures are equal, simply because they lived and died. Shades of subtlety are, of course, preferable to the school of Oliver Stone, but I’m also certain that, upon leaving a movie, one should not tap any nearby shoulder and ask, “Um, what the fuck was all that?” Rubbish, sir or madam, and the sort that can’t even take its own stench as inspiration to become a camp classic. In more than one sense, Thatcher is ideal to play Joan Crawford in a sequel to Mommie Dearest, with a musical number or two to keep things honest. Instead, we must be content with the gutless; a movie neither here nor there and not a single reason to exist, save the lust for critical approval. To make matters worse, there’s even a nod to last year’s Best Picture winner, as if to say that Maggie too was reinvented for our consumption. A My Fair Lady of government. Or maybe just The Cunt’s Speech for a woman out of time. And out of her damn mind.

Clearly, Polanski is more than the perfect conductor for this chamber piece of bourgeois illusion, what with his direct line to the infernos of madness disguised as European enlightenment and Southern California sun. We trust him implicitly, knowing full well that mankind is often at its worst when it first insists on pleasantries. He doesn’t trust a damn bit of it, and neither should we, and his cynicism is both well-earned and effortlessly seductive. The dialogue is all Reza’s, of course, but Polanski controls events with the inevitability of death itself, which is only slightly more inevitable than our capacity for cruelty. Still, and as anyone should never forget, this brief interlude just happens to be bitingly hilarious, as is any glimpse of other people coming apart that are not ourselves. The set-up itself is a dissertation on the absurdity of the comfortable class: four slices of white bread standing before a computer as the day’s events – one couple’s kid has hit the other’s child in the mouth with a stick – are hunted and pecked into some kind of official document. All want to solve the problem without accusations or lawsuits, and perhaps if they can all simply have a chat, everyone will leave satisfied. There’s even the promise that the two young boys will sit down, shake hands, and smile it all away. Perhaps the offending boy will apologize, perhaps not, but we’re all educated and civilized, so why not put this to bed and return to our daily distractions? There’s an early sense that the bully’s father, Alan (Christoph Waltz, a master as always), doesn’t expect much from his son, but optimism largely reigns supreme, at least until appearances yield to the usual suspicions and judgment.

Not unexpectedly, Alan and his wife Nancy (Kate Winslet) are wholly unsuited for being on the same planet together, least of all the confines of marriage, and snipes and snippets reveal a further discomfort with what passes for a family. Alan, cell phone buzzing about like a beehive on fire, is consumed by his law practice, but the other end of the line may as well be dead air. He’s an immersed man in full, unwilling to come up for air because he prefers the sensation of drowning. We sense that at least his job simulates the combat he craves, and sitting idle might remind him of his craven mistakes. “A man needs to have his hands free…He needs to be able to at least give off the impression that he is capable of being alone,” his wife might add, as if he would insist he were anything but alone, only at full volume. Above all, though, Alan finds the whole matter a pathetic charade, reasonably concluding that when kids punch and kick, they do so to advance their tenuous positions in a world that will soon remind them that there won’t always be cautious parents advocating for decency. Let them have this brief dance with inhumanity, when the stakes aren’t so high and the wounds not so deep. Only Penelope (Jodie Foster, her first great role in years) doesn’t quite see it that way. Teeth were lost, nerves were exposed, and how can anyone let an injustice go unpunished? Penelope’s descent from stoic museum piece to lost soul is, as with much else, not unexpected, but what resonates most deeply is her submission to the whip crack limousine liberalism so righteously deserves across its back. She’s good intentions swept away by the tide of reality; the very sort who, without a hint of self-awareness, would honestly offer her book-filled involvement with Africa as superior to the soil itself.

Even Penelope’s husband, Michael (John C. Reilly, forever and always a Step Brother), is a casualty-in-waiting, though his “fall” is less to despair than a long-awaited embrace with the Alan within. He’s been hiding away from his manhood for years, and his expressed disgust with rodents (he casually describes setting his daughter’s hamster outside to die, prompting the first of several interrogations) is but a manifestation of shrinking before the strutting superiority of his spouse. The play’s vision, while not reactionary by design, does appear to conclude that half-assed liberalism is always more dangerous than the real deal, and in some sense, at least bigots have the courage of their convictions. At bottom, Penelope is that bleeding heart who writes books about suffering between her endless lectures, all while not having a clue about the way anyone with a pulse actually lives. For her, a lost incisor during a playground brawl can and will be equated with Stalinist purges, which is exactly the lack of perspective that largely killed off what remained of the left’s connection to vitality and seriousness. In a world where “words are weapons” and standards of conduct but rude dismissals of cultural difference, it becomes impossible for the same worldview to change a single heart, let alone a head. Alan and Michael unite for a time, much in the way two men would when the yammer of femininity burns too bright, but they aren’t the “correct” side so much as a brutal repudiation of the most insidious weakness running – that a single person absorbed in the context of their life is ever really capable of empathy. Penelope claims to get it, while Michael ultimately admits his cluelessness. And Alan, well, he’ll take his chances with oblivion.

One feels a sense of relief after Carnage, as if the movie gods at last conspired to provide a good time without redemption. There’s no pretense afoot, as it’s all a lark, but larks often come disguised as blood sport. There’s a jazzy rhythm to the piece that can’t be denied, and amidst all the insults, dirty looks, and pitiful justifications, there’s a Polish midget waiting in the wings to shrug with grim satisfaction. I love this latest turn by one of yesteryear’s masters, and after the haunting finality of The Ghost Writer (as bleak as a Noah Cross chuckle), he seems committed to the notion that life can only be worth living when we finally accept that by and large, it is not. Thankfully, rumors of a “stagy” presentation were unfounded, talk of frivolousness far-fetched, and for the first time in many a moon, I bathed in the glow of actors and filmmakers at the tops of their respective games. It just might be the film’s theme transferred to my heavy heart: expect the worst, and relish the truest form of love that can emerge, the love that is unexpected (and fleeting) pleasure.

The crapfest begins in the past, in black and white appropriately enough, where we see a drunk Marine fondle a samurai sword like it’s the devil’s own instrument. World War II has just ended, and this fighting man has come for the only thing that got him through 1001 horror-filled nights: home front vagina, preserved like a fine wine. As he tickles and fondles his prey (“Isn’t that a fire to make love to?”), a child sits in the next room, shattered by the sounds he hears. You see, that woman is his mother, and he doesn’t like strange men pawing the dear sweet woman. As the sex turns violent, and the Marine begins to do what Marines do, the little boy – Matt Stone to you and me – runs out, screaming for his mother’s innocence. Before the Marine can land another punch, Matt grabs the sword and, before god and man and a roaring fire, slices the American hero to ribbons. “You crazy kid,” the dying man spits, and before we know it, the title card appears, announcing a blistering score that will alternate between 70s porno and B-movie action pic without regard for good sense. It’s an opening scene that promises excitement, especially when we see that the part of Clarence will be played by a man named James Dobson.

Cut to the present, and Matt is spending his day being ground to dust by a busty belly dancer. Matt, played by Shatner, is a man of butterfly collars and tight pants, sporting the sort of jewelry that would embarrass a cheap pimp. But Matt is horny, and not for the last time, only his quickie is soon interrupted by a jealous dame; a rich tart who had been financing Matt’s ventures, and she’s one who does not look kindly upon sexual indiscretions. “We’re just friends,” Matt insists, though his benefactor retorts with the first of the movie’s many truisms: “Nobody’s just friends with a belly dancer.” They drive off, arguing all the way, and as they stop beside a lake, the woman roars, “Go back to your belly dancer…She’s a tramp! A tramp! A tramp!” This unkindness sends Matt back into the past, and, with a tic that doubles as a murderous tell, he begins nibbling on his pinky finger right before attacking the defenseless dame. Channeling “The Enemy Within” from Shatner’s previous gig, the woman scratches his face, eliciting a roar that could shatter glass. Soon, it’s utter chaos in that front seat, complete with biting, strangling, and more eye-popping, teeth-baring grins than one should expect during an act of violence. Shatner loses ten pounds in sweat right before our eyes, and right after draining the final ounce of life from her body, he lights up a cigarette, apparently thinking he’s just had sex. He even nudges the dead girl, wondering why she won’t wake up. Realizing the deadly deed at last, Matt jumps out, sobs, and sends the car into the lake with a Chappaquiddick flair.

Having just lost his sugar momma to that dreaded impulse, Matt packs up his belongings, throws up in his hand, and seeks greener pastures. As he drives along, he damn near runs over a young girl (Tina), who thinks nothing of hopping in the car, I’m guessing because we hadn’t yet heard of Adam Walsh. As he speeds away, Tina in tow, Matt runs over a dog, killing it instantly. Tina cries, but with bon mot #2, Matt soothes a young soul: “No, dogs lick their wounds real good….He’ll be okay.” Cut in two now synonymous with “okay”, man and girl continue on, though the next scene has Tina crying in front of her dead father’s grave, Matt nowhere in sight. Next, a cut to Tina’s mother, Ann, who is listening to her rich neighbor Julia tell her about the man she wants to set her up with (“He’s a regular Burt Reynolds”). Both women are rich widows, so we know where Matt will end up next, but who knew that Matt would meet Julia in a hardware store and have her committed to a phony investment deal in the time it took to ring up a bag of screws. Invited to dinner and having convinced Julia that he’s a brilliant hedge fund manager, Matt is, within an hour, strolling with Ann around a zoo, practically begging for her hand. But as Matt tries to get through the turnstile, he bumps into a woman carrying balloons. “You fat….”, he yells, interrupting his insult with a far greater explosion. “People like you ought to be ground up, turned into dog food.” One could argue that the punishment did not fit the crime, and that yes, this stranger is prone to overreaction, but Ann moves ahead, ignoring her daughter’s concerns and fucking Matt in a seedy motel before the day is out.

“You can’t judge a hot dog by its skin,” Matt reasons, and it’s as close to a personal mantra as he’s likely to reveal. Though in Matt’s case, profuse sweating, unprovoked  tirades, and facial expressions than run the gamut from hallucinatory to epileptic just might reflect the man within. Ann cares little for the obvious madness, and yes, she too would like to hear more about this great investment opportunity. A woman might wonder why a self-proclaimed millionaire is staying in a rat trap called the Motel 11, and that he is unable to produce a lick of paperwork related to what he claims to do for a living, but Ann misses sex, and it’s been at least a month since her husband’s death. Soon, Tina is watching her mother fuck Matt inside the motel, and oh how she cries. Naturally, she runs to the cemetery. Random cuts follow – how can Matt be “introduced” to Tina when he’s already met her? – before Matt is forced to leave a bar after spying Oddjob at a nearby table. Back at the motel room, Oddjob garbles endlessly, though we do catch the threat, “I need cash…NOW!” I think Oddjob has something to do with Matt’s childhood, because within seconds, Matt is crying about the institution that once housed him, and how he didn’t mean to murder his own mother with a scarf.  “I heard her neck snap,” he whispers, arguing that slowly tightening an article of clothing around a person’s neck for a good ten minutes can, at times, lead to an accidental death. He ends the confessional with a long look at his mom’s picture, chanting “Damn, damn, damn!” with a Florida Evans flourish. And yes, Oddjob, I’ll get you some money.

So Tina hides out in Matt’s car for some reason, and is conveniently able to witness the next sequence of events. You see, Oddjob has asked Matt to meet him at a car wash to give him some loot from Julia’s safe. Matt does not know if there is a safe, but it’s a sound bet. As Oddjob waits by his RV (identified by a big sign that reads “Karate Pete”), Matt gets on the roof, drops a noose around his neck, and cranks him up to hang like a punching bag. Thankfully, Matt sees the humor in the scene and dances around his swaying body like he’s Ali in training. “Hang in there, Pete,” he chuckles, punching and jabbing with relish. Suddenly, Pete pulls out a knife, cuts himself down, and chases Matt into his car. Turnabout is fair play, however, as Matt backs a desperate Pete into the car wash, only to run him over and back over his head for the killing blow. Tina leaps out, Matt gives chase, and as day turns to night and back again, Matt screams, “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill ya.” The next day, Tina remains remarkably calm, but as Matt buys food in a sleeveless vest best described as “70s sailor”, she whispers to her mother that Matt is a murderer. Not believed, Tina runs away again to the cemetery, prompting Matt to cry, “Kids don’t go to graveyards! It isn’t normal!” He convinces Ann that her daughter is crazy and out to get him. This takes all of 30 seconds, which is appropriate, as he has known the mother and child for two days, while Tina and Ann shared a good decade of bonding. Matt doesn’t take any chances, though, telling Tina, “Listen, he deserved to die…He was bad!” But Matt is running out of time. He needs cash fast, and it’s time to up the ante.

So yeah, Ann finally hands over $10,000 in large bills, asking no questions, so Matt checks out of his motel and runs over to steal Julia blind. “Where’s the safe? The safe! Yes, the SAFE!” Turns out there is a safe, which conveniently houses a gun, a fact that doesn’t amuse Matt in the slightest. A fight ensues, Matt grunts, and Julia happens upon a knife that she uses to slice his hand. Expectedly, Tina is watching the whole thing from the window, and just in time to see Matt hop around like a giddy child and slaughter Julia with great cheer. Tina screams and Matt gives chase, though the girl doesn’t exactly make it difficult by running once again to that goddamn graveyard. After a minute or so of cat and mouse, the chase wraps up in the mortuary, just in time to interrupt the only funeral where the mourners huddle six deep at the very back of the room while the open coffin sits a good 100 feet away. Matt pushes one man, punches another, and he completely flips out after seeing the corpse. Yes, there’s a flashback to his own mother’s funeral, where his attendance is curious indeed as he’s the one who killed her. Then, for no reason, Matt runs back to Julia’s, a smart move indeed as he left the door wide open with a bloody corpse within eyesight of the entire street. But he must get at that safe!

But before making off with untold riches, Matt pauses to sob in the corner, giving time for Ann to arrive, scream, and have her head shoved into a fish tank. Matt sweats off another five or six pounds, gives us whatever facial expressions he’s neglected so far, and damn near kills the woman. Thankfully, that little dynamo Tina is back, ready to shove a sword into Matt’s back. Is this a repeat of Matt’s young trauma? Is it coming full circle? Perhaps, but that’s for the sequel. Matt folds like a tent and dies in the fetal position, while mom and daughter cry, run away, and head home to ponder why the next time, the adult of the relationship should not put life and limb and money and child at risk for a man who, a few days before, had introduced himself to the family by nearly running over that same child. It’s a hard lesson to be learned, but let us not judge from the comfort of our internet savvy present. Women had no way of investigating prospective beaus in that more innocent age, and sometimes you had to clear out your life savings to keep a good man around. And if he’s slick, sweaty, and covered in bites and scratches, so much the better.

Steven Spielberg, for all of his virtues regarding craft, vision, and storytelling ability, is a coward. Perhaps the greatest coward of all, given his near-fanatical devotion to the sunny side of life. Who else among us, when faced with the monumental slaughterhouse of the Holocaust, would choose instead to focus on the few lives that were saved? Or, while scanning the blood-soaked horizons of World War II, would damn the torpedoes and ask us to stand tall with a single man’s obsession with having lived a good life? And then there’s the incomprehensibility of slavery, reduced to a mutton-chop filled courtroom of musty declarations. Or a tale of lesbian awakening, sanitized in favor of slapstick, applause lines, and Oprah Winfrey slappin’ white bitches. Now, at long last, the Master has tackled the Great War, perhaps the one conflict in human history so bizarrely byzantine that no two historians agree on its cause or consequence. And yet, for all the millions of lives lost and complex political machinations, it stands to reason that Spielberg would strip it all away in favor of a boy’s love for a horse. Not just any horse, mind you, but a super horse. One that just might be the resurrection, given its endless trials by fire. And it damn well better be a Christ substitute, lest we have that moment of clarity whereby the entirety of our 146-minute ordeal is reduced to a clunky tale of zoophilia.

And yet, even had our hero Albert been transformed into some sort of Edwardian Mr. Hands, War Horse would still be Spielberg’s most self-indulgent mess of sticky sentimentality; a film so off-putting and saccharine that I hated it from the very first frame. To be honest, I also hated it on the drive to the theater, and perhaps ever since the first time I saw the trailer, but I’m always willing to have my expectations violated. Instead, about the only thing violated was my cinematic sensibility, and perhaps my naïve insistence that Spielberg could choose a project that didn’t believe a handshake between a father and son wasn’t somehow more life-affirming than being gassed, stabbed, shot, and bludgeoned and living to tell the tale. At bottom, Spielberg is continually refighting the pains of youth, and while a sane society would cast out anyone so inclined to slot barbarism on a lower rung than distant fathers, we, apparently more enlightened, bestow Oscars on such saps. And here, with this fatal injection of fructose, he just might win another, as if the highest expression of artistic virtue is a boy of 1914 vowing to the heavens that when 1918 arrives, he will find his prized steed amidst the dizzying death house of Europe. Millions of men and horses went to the meat-grinder during those years, but here, with a laser-like focus, we can forget about them all, for we have one of each, both strong and attractive and bound by the fates only a hack screenwriter could provide.

Curiously – or perhaps not, given the provocation to hang oneself that defines them both – there’s the strong scent of Forrest Gump throughout War Horse, only the thoroughbred is the feather this time around, floating and neighing from battlefield to barn, changing lives with but a flash of teeth or hoof. He is first brought to Albert by an auction, though the purchase is quickly regretted by Albert’s father, who is just the sort of man who, because of pride and drink, is about to lose the family farm. But just as a disgusted dad is about to put a bullet into the horse (named Joey), Albert swears by the angels that this beast will, in fact, plow the field and produce the crop that keeps the landlord at bay. It’s a scene of majestic power, unless of course you’ve actually seen a movie or two and are no longer moved by tsk-tsking neighbors walking away, only to return when the horse up and does the job to a soaring John Williams score. Still, the joy is short-lived, as war comes to England, and a desperate pop sells the horse to the military. The soldier who buys Joey swears by those same angels to bring the horse back to his true owner, even if, well, he dies during the war’s first battle. Thankfully, two plucky German kids find the horse and, rather than see it (and Joey’s companion horse who exists only to die later so that Joey might live) destroyed, they go AWOL, hiding out on a French farm.

Now if I told you that War Horse threw in everything but a sickly girl, I’d be lying, as the horse’s next encounter is with, you guessed it, a sickly girl. Before her appearance, however, Spielberg goes full-throttle pussy and, during the German boys’ execution for desertion, uses a conveniently timed windmill blade to block the moment of death. Yes, even now, when Steven’s kids are approaching 30, the weepy old fart can’t kill a child onscreen. It’s the same impulse that caused him to re-edit E.T. by replacing guns with walkie-talkies, and the very one that will ruin the fuck out of the upcoming Lincoln. And so Joey comes into the little girl’s orbit, and the moment we hear she is not allowed to ride a horse because of her fragile bones, we know that she will in fact ride, like the wind and into the sunset, if necessary. Only her ride is directly into the enemy camp, and once again, Joey floats along the waters of his destiny. And while the soil stinks from the rot of horsemeat, Joey is taken under the wing of the one kind German soldier who sees only love in the eyes of this snorting giant, and thereby saved for another caretaker, who just happens to be the guy who will make sure this horse steps by thousands of dead and dying human beings to get precious medical care.

Before that, however, Joey runs like lightning, through trenches, over tanks, and hell, into the sky like Elliott and his alien. Despite not being shot in a no man’s land that had a 99.7% mortality rate, the horse’s journey is interrupted by barbed wire. And so he waits, struggling to gain his freedom, until such a time that he is noticed by soldiers from two opposing sides. Waving the white flag, the British and German men meet in the muddy mess of no man’s land to free the horse, and thank the stars the German speaks English. They bond, peeling away the trap, and when wire-cutters are required, a dozen are thrown up from the trenches, much to the thinking-man’s dismay. But the audience roared with delight, so who am I to challenge Spielberg’s unmatched talent for cheap pandering? Don’t you see? When the guns fall silent, even for a moment, these two men chat and joke like old friends. And so would they be, were it not for this blasted war. It’s a clip of gut-wrenching silliness, but exactly the one we’ll see come Oscar night. Sure, the pretty brown horse had the power to erase borders and artificial divides among fighting men, but can the little bugger win the peace? Perhaps a sequel will see Joey shipped to Paris for the negotiations. Maybe President Wilson can feed him a carrot as he gallops through the Hall of Mirrors or something.

At long last, Joey comes home to Albert, though not before one final brush with death. You see, Joey is badly wounded, and the doctor wants him shot. A gun is cocked, put to the head of the horse, and then, a sound. You’ll know it well, as it’s the same sound we heard when Albert was training Joey to be a good boy. The horse turns. Again, that call in the darkness. Albert is still blindfolded, what with his encounter with mustard gas, but he knows his horse is near. The gun again. The call. Holy shit, the horse begins to walk towards the light. The crowd of men parts like the Red Sea, though this is not enough proof for the brass. Kill the horse, they cry, until Albert proves it is his horse by describing his markings. But the markings are covered! Kill the horse! No wait, let me wash away the mud. Blast it all, it IS the horse! The boy speaks truth. Blessed Jesus, I once was blind, but now I see. Only before man and beast can lie together forever in love and good tidings, Joey has to be sold one more time in order to come full circle with another auction, a collection among the men, and the return of the old man whose little girl so loved the horse for so brief a time and is now dead. Albert returns to the farm, riding atop his one great love, and the sunset bleeds John Ford from every last pore. Father and son reunite, love redeems, and all is well. It is 1919. Peace is at hand. Thank God Almighty there’s nothing around the corner to tear this pair asunder.

Her arrival is marked by gnashing, bucking, and a jetting jaw so sharp it could slice an artery. She is Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), the daughter of wealthy Russian Jews, and she is in town, so to speak, to begin treatment with the up-and-coming Swiss doctor, Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender, impressive once again). Using the controversial new method known as the “talking cure”, Jung draws out the increasingly hysterical Sabina until, well, she spills forth with a rush of sexual dysfunction. She was beaten by a tyrannical father, took pleasure from withholding defecation, and, as luck would have it, eventually expresses a grave desire to bed the naïve young doctor. And so begins David Cronenberg’s sublime new psycho-drama, A Dangerous Method, a film destined to appear on my year-end ten-best list for sheer entertainment value alone. Expecting a dry, pointless exercise, I was instead treated to a witty, sly, sexually charged battle royale between the two great giants of psychoanalysis, Dr. Jung and his more famous father figure, Sigmund Freud. As played by Viggo Mortensen (as if channeling Paul Muni), Freud is an arrogant, cigar-chomping bastard with brilliance to burn. He’s all crisp suit and well-manicured beard, and as such, he’s destined to drive a stake through the heart of his young protégé. Their early friendship (begun as a marathon 12-hour conversation) leads to much more, only to disintegrate in the face of conflicting opinions (it seems that Jung is a little too fond of mysticism). Freud was right, of course, and his assessment of Jung blisteringly accurate, as the pair manages to inhabit a wrestling ring like two intellectuals warring for the soul of mankind.

Sabina successfully seduces Jung, needless to say, and their passionate encounters run the gamut from heavy petting to not one, but two highly-charged spankings (in fairness, one is more accurately labeled a whipping). Jung’s painfully proper moustache always appears on the verge of violent indulgence, yet he manages to rationalize his infringement on the doctor/patient separation with the expected hilarious hypocrisy. He rages against Freud for reducing the whole of the human animal to sexual repression, yet proves the wise Austrian’s theories correct time and time again. Again, I have no idea how historically accurate any of this is, nor do I care, and for once, a movie involving iconic figures throws caution to the wind and insists on having fun. Instead of studious aspirations, the film relies on verbal combat, spitting out fascinating ideas and theories without regard for the audience’s ability to follow along. Some dismissed the movie as “talky”, which more often than not damns the critic as simpleminded, rather than accurately describing the verbiage on display. I mean, this is Sigmund Freud, the man who brought the penis front and center to any and all debates.  Who on earth would want him to remain tight-lipped? Years pass, journeys begin and end, and throughout, despite the brief 99-minute running time, we feel sated. Tightly, hysterically wound, the whole thing flirts with fabulous disaster by burning the rule book for highlighting the past.

*Full Telluride 2011 coverage

Curtis (Michael Shannon) is an Ohio man through and through, and as such, all but synonymous with America itself. Whenever politicians speak of the grit and toughness that flow from America’s ever-stiffening backbone, they speak of men like Curtis; the calloused, uncomplaining types whose very silence speaks to a steady resolve that, simply put, just gets things done. Whether or not the legend trumps fact, or our need for narrative overwhelms the more complicated reality, is beside the point – Curtis believes it, and we believe in Curtis. And so goes the dream – play by the rules, do your best, and the riches of home, family, and work will follow, interrupted only occasionally by forces we do our damndest not to ever fully understand. Curtis sure as hell hasn’t the time, working long hours at the kind of job we always associate with the type – dirty and loud, involving drills, heavy equipment, and piles of earth. Mindless, perhaps, but steady and honest labor, even if it’s just not enough to convince your wife that she doesn’t need to peddle crafts and homemade curtains at the Saturday swap meet. Together they pinch and save, toil and rest, and deal as anyone must with the stresses of parenthood. Only their daughter is deaf, and while happy and well-adjusted, she sure could use that costly implant; the sort of surgery that represents a liberation unreachable in years past. Thankfully, Curtis has great health insurance, and in six weeks’ time, his little girl will face a future with few barriers. She too will drink from the waters of promise. It’s in the cards. All but assured. This is, after all, America.

Only Curtis is a man beset by visions. Bad dreams. Nightmares that he just can’t shake. After the kisses have been dispensed, his daughter’s cheeks pinched, and dinner heartily enjoyed, Curtis settles into a routine of night sweats, turmoil, and even the occasional bedwetting episode. He sees a storm ahead, and it’s so massive and off-putting that he can’t trouble his wife about the details. The clouds are dark, ominous, and enveloping, and the rain a gritty, oil-based slick that threatens to wipe away life as we know it. He hears no voices, and feels no waking threats, but his sleep has become so terrifying that he can’t shake them off as mere illusions. Understandably, perhaps, given the life Curtis leads, he wonders if he might have been given the gift of foresight; the touch of the divine to help prepare for a nasty future.  If only it were that clear-cut. You see, Curtis is also the child of madness – the real, clinical variety – and he considers the distinct possibility that his mind is taking that long-feared turn into paranoid schizophrenia. Curtis’ mother, herself a victim of that very disorder, sits glassy-eyed in a care facility, as if to mock his concerns. Curtis wants help (even seeking counseling from the typically overworked, under-trained staff at free clinics), but as time passes, he’s not so sure he’s destined for the same family curse. No, this is too real; these threats are external, part of a wicked world that is slowly, steadily closing in.

One of the many virtues of Take Shelter is that while we share in Curtis’ hellish descent, we never see him taking direction from any supernatural entity, real or imagined. Curtis simply begins to “prepare” in the only way that makes sense to him: adding on to his storm shelter so when the end comes, there will be more than protection from the rain and wind. When the cataclysm arrives, the family will need food, water, and light, and if this means a bank loan and borrowing equipment from work, so be it. His behavior, of course, appears bizarre to everyone else, but how can one explain the workings of one’s mind? I can see what’s coming, and I’d be irresponsible not to do whatever it takes to keep my family alive and well. But as the dreams intensify and the clouds grow gloomier with each passing day, it becomes more than a task to complete; it takes on the look and feel of an obsession blocking out the rest of daily life. As with any monomaniacal pursuit, relationships suffer, work falls away, and priorities shift with great force. In the end, what is being done in the name of compassion appears to be its very antithesis, driving a wedge between the dull necessities that constitute life as lived and the stark, unchanging bulwark that is the grand pursuit. Why else do we lose ourselves in obsession? Despite that gnawing sense of danger, it is, in fact, the ultimate escape, almost as if by following its mandates, the troubles that forced you to its shores simply fall away into irrelevance.

Taking the film straight, unburdened by subtext, the brutal journey into mental illness is a fascinating one, as what comes to the fore is the sense that one so afflicted could never hope to explain the torment. It is, frankly, impossible to feel full empathy with the disease, as we naturally cling to the simple wisdom that one can simply alter behavior at will. We encourage victims to buck up, cheer up, or move on as needed, as if the brain were so malleable that it could be brought into line by simple encouragement. And if we want to believe that Curtis has come face to face with a genuine dilemma, in that his dreams are windows into an apocalyptic future, then the film works just as well, especially when we consider the ambiguous, yet strangely revealing, conclusion. Frankly, the “truth” of what Curtis sees matters not, for in the end, he acts as if it is so, and his behavior – and the effect it has on those around him – is what ultimately drives the story. But it is the building dread, the very sort the film cultivates like a sickness, that pushes Take Shelter beyond a simplistic “is he or isn’t he?” exercise. If it were simply a matter of learning the ultimate state of Curtis’ mental health, the film would wither to its lifeless end, running out of air like a sad balloon. Instead, the claustrophobic intent grinds away at a viewer’s nerve until it smacks us silly with the actual nature of Curtis’ plight – his Everyman is America itself, and there’s no succor in what awaits us all. It’s the America just after the big fall; that moment when we all realized there’s no going back to prosperity, hope, and a better life. The future is black, yes, and we’re all an inspiration away from digging our own backyard tomb.

Yes, the “storm like no other” is America’s future – one having arrived sooner than we’d care to admit – and despite our best intentions, the center cannot hold. The jobs are gone or going, our homes a senseless reminder of crushing debt, and our kids, well, they need us more than ever and we’re in no position to offer them guarantees. We’re out of money, out of time, and sick with worry. We work to feed our families. We endure the bullshit to keep our insurance. We save for a yearly vacation that only numbs the pain for a time. And at the core of Curtis – at the core of us all – is that unshakable feeling that with every new day, the thing we’ve put out of our minds is here at last, like the grim reaper with hand outstretched. That storm of which he speaks – universal, yes, but always individualized – is no mirage, nor is it the unfurling of heavenly scripture. For when it all falls apart, there’s no lonelier feeling, and only a godless indifference fills the void of purpose. He’s not crazy, but he’ll wish he was, for then there would be a solution to the crisis at hand. Rest, medication, and therapy. Maybe a loving embrace. But when a dream dies – the dream, as it happens – the only real comfort is the undiscovered country from which no man returns.

In the best sense, Take Shelter is the first (and best) snapshot of the zeitgeist, all without a shred of the overwrought. There are no speeches, no convenient outs for our pain, and no symbols to drag from their beds and beat into a soothing submission. We’re left with a parable, but one with the good sense to avoid the straightest course. No one is flattered, few are spared, and solutions are as hard to come by as the shelter Curtis will eventually need to keep out the rain. Our deep, abiding concerns – our angst-ridden days and nights - are eating us alive, and the sky above, far from being our salvation, will simply open up and quietly wash us away.

With gritty simplicity and raw emotional intensity, director Steve McQueen’s Shame becomes the Last Tango in Paris for a new era; a sadly perverse gutter ballet that wallows in sexual addiction and untethered humanity in ways rarely explored in the usually cautious world of cinema. And while Michael Fassbender’s Brandon is solid, he’s no Paul, though to ask anyone to compete with Marlon Brando at the peak of his powers is an exercise in futility. Still, where Last Tango drifts (every scene without Paul is mired in tedium), Shame remains focused, never wavering from Brandon’s punishing descent into a hell of his own making. Above all, this is a work of behavior, where plot devices and obligatory story turns are left behind as scraps of inevitability to be picked over by less gifted filmmakers. Shorn of extraneous detail – we are here and now, as if future and past were luxuries lost somewhere along the way – the film builds, pushes, and literally invades our space with encounters almost offensively private. It’s no great revelation to expose the self-loathing and pain at the core of obsessive promiscuity, but McQueen isn’t showing his cards, preferring instead to leave us with the nakedness of Brandon’s twisted nature. He’s more than a slab of beef; he’s already been prepped, gutted, and bled dry for sport.

For once, I was excited from the opening bell, as the first scene aboard a subway offers a lesson to us all on how to build character with no words and few gestures. As Brandon studies a woman sitting nearby, no dialogue is exchanged, but the glances are so witheringly seductive that the woman practically orgasms on screen. Using ambient noise, long takes, and subtle movement, an entire seduction from start to finish takes place right before our eyes. The woman says absolutely nothing before departing from the train, but we know exactly what she’s thinking. She’s gone over everything in her own mind, and we cheer the result. Such bravura filmmaking is rare amongst new filmmakers, and it does not surprise us that McQueen has worked as a visual artist. He possesses a rare talent for composition, and his use of color and music instill the proceedings with a flair beyond the commonplace. In other hands, the film might suffer from familiarity. Here, it’s practically the opening salvo of a cinematic revolution.

Needless to say, the film is saturated with sex (and yes, Fassbender will inspire a great deal of penis envy), and while most of what we see remains curiously joyless, it’s less the opinion that anonymous intercourse is always bad than the particular experiences of a man who long ago lost any other method of communication. This is no morality play, where bed-hopping is automatically a sign of the devil’s work or even a damaged soul, but simply Brandon’s specific arc of character. Larger issues may indeed be at work, but at this time and place, a single human being has channeled the whole of his life into a crippling preoccupation that substitutes for actual living. Consider Brandon’s boss in contrast, even while he flirts, seduces, and beds assorted women. His methods are a ritualized, almost comical game, and a foolish one at that, but one that insists on a set of rules seemingly agreed upon at some unspecified date. Brandon, on the other hand, operates from need alone, and mere compulsion pushes him into these otherwise distasteful interactions with others. Even the arrival of his sister, Sissy (an extremely sharp Carey Mulligan), is not enough to right the ship, as her pathetic state simply distracts Brandon from the only reality he could ever know. She too is in pain, but he’d rather not be reminded of the consequences over which he claims to have no control. If anything, she’s a version of Brandon he’d like to forget. Shame, fortunately, deserves only to be remembered.

*Full Telluride 2011 coverage

Michael Hazanavicius’ supremely winning The Artist, a film that sounds like a cross between Singin’ in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard, evokes the cinematic period of transition between the silent era and the dreaded “talkies”. Here, though, the result is itself a silent movie, with crisp, eye-popping black and white cinematography and the occasional title card to keep things honest. But it’s more than an immersion in nostalgia (no fondness for “the good old days” is assumed); it’s a rare tribute to a lost medium whose time has, thankfully, passed. Without any sense that Hollywood turned an unfortunate corner once it insisted that its movie characters speak to audiences, The Artist, via the story of silent star George Valentin (Cannes’ Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin) suggests that the entertainment of its day – then and now – holds currency and the ability to captivate, but as a fleeting craft, it need not last beyond its own brief time in the sun. Obvious, yes, but no one’s looking back. It’s why terms like “dated” don’t seem to matter when one considers that at bottom, they help us gain insight into the time period on display and, more importantly, what had the power to move audiences. We no longer want our motion pictures in quite this way, but that’s more a testament to our evolving humanity than any sign of cultural decay. People like George are left behind, but not much else is.

Valentin is a star, an action hero renegade with charm to burn, and his public appearances command huge crowds and adoring press. All of his films are by-the-numbers trash, of course, but he inhabits them with grace and charisma, lending their mass appeal a singular touch (few are as deadly with an arched eyebrow). Once the age of talk begins – represented here by new sensation Peppy Miller (her meteoric rise is a well-played showbiz cliché) – Valentin is pushed aside with brutal disregard, but how could it be otherwise? We care for him, of course, because it’s instinctive to the human animal to empathize with those for whom better days are not ahead, but Peppy is no villain. She is but the next stage of development, and she too will eventually find a hollow conclusion to her pursuits. It’s to the film’s credit that Peppy is not demonized as an opportunist, nor is she without talent, and deep down, it’s likely that Valentin agrees. Predictably, his gut reaction is to insist that the silent era is not yet over (he pours all of his resources into a ridiculous epic entitled Tears of Love), and he smugly declares, “I am an artist! I am not a puppet!” Is he right? Can a peddler of the formulaic be an artist? And can one ever hope to aspire to such lofty pursuits if one’s craft does not survive the time in which it is created?

Thankfully, The Artist comes down firmly on the side of the affirmative, insisting that the act of creation, for good or ill, need not last throughout the ages. If tradition is the illusion of permanence, permanence itself is the illusion of value, as anyone can speak to who has watched with disgust as great thinkers and talents have disappeared into the ether in favor of hacks with great PR machines. We are wrong to assume that if it’s still around after 300 years, it must always be good, and we are just as incorrect to argue that absence connotes a much-deserved burial. So yes, Valentin was and is an artist; our judgment of him, then, is only a matter of degree. His star may not shine as brightly as, say, Peppy’s, but as their final dance demonstrates, there’s room enough on stage for both. The Artist is clever, wise, and spirited (look for a truly awesome dream sequence), and despite hanging on a bit too long (a few redundancies creep in during the last 15 minutes), it transcends its gimmick to become a moving ode to everyone who straps on a pair of shoes for our amusement. The opening night crowd (ours was the first in the United States to see it) seemed to agree, granting the closing credits a roar we haven’t heard in years. Keep an eye out for this little gem, and don’t be surprised when it becomes the first silent movie to be nominated for an Oscar in over eighty years.

*Full Telluride 2011 coverage

There once was a time – now so long ago it seems but a dream – when the Cales approached the Labor Day weekend with an almost naïve optimism; days full of opportunity, and the nights an endless, always winnable battle against fatigue and despair. As such, the Telluride Film Festival, one of the world’s most sacred cinematic affairs, both because of its unique, uncommercial locale and highly guarded schedule, became our raison d’etre; our yearly sabbatical into the bliss of artistic expression and theatrical escape. We cherished the world premieres, the sense of exclusivity, and above all, the communing with fellow moviegoers who, we once believed, were our soul mates of the silver screen. Telluride is always an expensive undertaking – passes, hotel rooms, and fine dining are all but unreachable to anyone but the fanatically devoted  (or decidedly well-off) – but we always found a way, whether that meant increasing our debt load, undignified begging, or even the kindness of strangers (yes, people we’ve never met have sent us money). Now, on our 9^th trip to this annual event, we are a different animal altogether; still in love with movies, of course, but older, crankier, and far less inclined to take a load off and enjoy clean mountain air. There’s a meanness about us now, and we’re pretty much certain this will be our swan song.

Almost from the beginning, as if the boundaries of Telluride proper release a toxic gas best able to extract the worst in our beings, we start bitching like two old coots in need of a nap. Right off the bat, there is the traffic. Not LA or Boston traffic, needless to say, but for a tiny burg, it grates as if we were suddenly thrust into the ass-end of an interstate work zone. As if on cue, some clueless bastard decides that 35mph is actually 20mph, and when I follow too closely, he will use the opportunity to slam on his brakes. Hard. I bolt into oncoming traffic to avoid a collision, being saved by the lack of actual traffic. But his move was deliberate, and when I finally got a chance to pass, he waved smugly, the surest move possible to elicit my wife’s blistering middle-fingered retort. So before our first movie, we were looking for trouble. Telluride, being home to some of the most expensive real estate in America, also brings out the more fanatical side of our class envy, and many a fist was raised in the direction of some snooty millionaire as we drove in. More than that, though, we just don’t like people anymore. Maybe we never did, but actual live crowds highlight our loathing in ways abstract, couch-sitting bitterness never could. Have there always been this many people? Moving so slowly to boot? I already had a headache, and we hadn’t yet reached our first queue.

Ah, the queue. If you’ve ever been to Telluride, you know the queue so well that it gives you night sweats. You’ll eat, sleep, and shit the queue until you damn near grab the nearest sharp object and vow never to stand in one again. It defines your life for four solid days, and just might be the most immovable object in the entire experience. Ten people? Twenty? Maybe fifty? Amateur hour, friend, as you’ll become a living statue in lines curling, shifting, and pulsing into eternity itself; a hell without end. Because of this, one must start this love affair with immobility as early as two hours prior to a screening, meaning that the schedule is more than selecting what you want to see. You have to factor in hour after hour of hip-shattering, knee-inflaming waiting into every single day. Back in 2002, it seemed a minor inconvenience. Now, it’s all but an act of war. Made worse, mind you, by cutters. You know the type: entitled, self-satisfied pukes of depravity who don’t do any actual waiting themselves, but saunter up at a time of their choosing to hail a friend or equally annoying acquaintance. Both the official program and the passes speak to the illegality of such a move (“the saving of places in line is not permitted”), but hundreds do it anyway. It might not matter to some, but when I get up at 6am to make a screening, and you of the 8am alarm bell get ahead of me for no other reason than your inherent rudeness, I shall not let it pass. No, sir.

Much to our delight, however, we had a focus for our obsession this time around, a white whale that just happened to be black, 300 pounds, and gay. Marcus Bachmann gay. While his name remains elusive – his pass is always just out of sight – I shall forever know him as Fat Black Gay Dude. To say I hate him is to describe the universe as a tad vast, and with every appearance at Telluride (we’ve seen him for several years now), we blast the gods for allowing him to live another day. But there he is, plopped down like a beached fuck of too many buffets, right there at the front, even though he didn’t put in the time. He waddles over, mincing in a way heretofore thought impossible for such a rare rotundity, smiles, and cuddles up next to his equally gay friends, only one of whom may have been in queue since the beginning. This year, FBGD has a partner in crime from New York; some husky-toned Jewish midget who avoids being my target of violence only because she’s far too new. I must give my boiling rage time to build. But it will come, as both are saddled with shitty taste, vapid conversation, and eye-rolling shop talk that lead one to believe that they have jobs in the industry. They are the Al Qaeda of Telluride, and only their bullet-ridden corpses dumped at sea will quench this acidic thirst.

Lines and lunatics aside, what of the films? Telluride 2011 went the Hollywood route this time, landing George Clooney as a tribute, when in most years, some Indian character actor is deemed sufficient to quiet the masses. Such star power is rare at Telluride, and we could only wonder how this might impact the show (more on that later). Not much, it would seem (at first), as the town prides itself on “protecting” celebrities, and it’s not uncommon to see many an Oscar winner wandering about solo without so much as a nod hello. No one hounds actors for autographs, and while pictures are likely taken, no official press hides in bushes. This is a low-key affair, and certainly the primary reason why it remains the best loved stop of the festival circuit. Yes, even we had our own Clooney Sighting, and it came and went as quietly as possible. On our way to dinner, we turned a corner and oh, there he was. Old George, dressed impeccably and still impossibly handsome, and there was I, wearing a stained Hawaiian shirt and scuffed tennis shoes. But we passed like two ships in the night – one the QE2, the other a garbage scow – and at no point did anyone fear an embarrassing encounter. Even an hour later, when Jennifer Garner and her smiling children passed mere yards in front of our dinner table, there was a decided lack of star fucking on display. To act in a contrary fashion would break festival protocol as if one had leaked details for the event in February. That said, had I known at the time what her movie had in store for me, I might have pulled a Bruno Hauptmann with at least one of the brats.

2011 would also be the year for Tilda Swinton (in town for a tribute and to promote We Need to Talk About Kevin), Werner Herzog (he all but lives here), Glenn Close, and Alexander Payne. We’d have fresh prints never before screened for a live audience, North American debuts, and titles not available for wider release until early next year. There would also be small gems and even smaller stinkers that will likely never again see the light of day, many of which will fall into the short film category (that said, last year’s Best Live Action short premiered here). Though Telluride is not usually strong with documentaries, they do manage to select the odd and the obscure, ensuring that at the very least, you’ll be treated to something no one else in your neck of the woods will have heard a whisper about. And admittedly, it’s this VIP veneer that draws us all back time after time, despite the annoyances. Not everything’s a hit (even though Telluride audiences notoriously fall in love with everything), but the selection committee is good about avoiding more mainstream fare that will hit multiplexes at some point in the future. Which is why Clooney’s award is so odd for the Telluride faithful. Though he has been associated with some great cinema in recent years, he’s still a movie star, and it’s hard to find a time when Telluride’s program so closely aligned with the cover of People magazine. Never fear, festival fans, I have no doubt that in 2012, the coveted Silver Medallion will again adorn the neck of some Mongolian cinematographer, or perhaps an editor who last worked with DeMille. It’s how they ride.

Oh, and before I forget, fuck the Telluride Mountain Lodge. Mind you, we’ve stayed here before, though in more flush times, we were able to swing a suite. Now, having booked a room at the eleventh hour, nothing remained in all of Mountain Village (necessary, given that the Chuck Jones Theater – the forced choice location for all Acme pass holders – is located here) save the glorified closets at $185 a night. It’s easily the smallest hotel room we’ve ever had the displeasure of staying in, and I’m including a moist Motel 6 in San Angelo, Texas that just about brought me to tears. So fine, I’d be bumping into my wife at every turn, and my late-night shit sessions would, by sheer proximity to the beds, be forced to envelop my nostrils as I tried to sleep, but what can a man do? Or expect? Not dirty linens and random pubic hairs found throughout each of our respective beds, of course, but that would all change after an angry note to our maid, right? I’ll be fucking damned if many of the hairs did not remain the next day, and the same mysterious stains on Brooke’s blanket weren’t just as creepily crispy. And the note? Crumpled in a ball at the bottom of the wastebasket. I guess that can be attributed to the maid’s poor English skills, but this is perhaps the only Colorado town where the Russians outnumber the Mexicans. Even the parking sucked mighty ass, with only three spaces to be fought over by at least 600 guests. Instead of something close by, I had to park in some “once free, now $20 a day parking garage” so far away that a morning hike to get the car damn near brought about a heart attack. And the walk back at night? Try a frightening, unlit path where one side tumbled over into a creek. The things I put up with for my devoted fan(s).

On the good side, there is the food, where for once we decided to skip peanuts and beef jerky and try a little fine cuisine. The first night, we dined at M’s Restaurant, which, being al fresco, gave us a bird’s eye view of bicycling children and a damn near lethal fountain (one girl smashed her ankle to bits). The noise aside, this was a great dinner, with lamb sweetbreads, wedge salad, and killer mac & cheese for the gentleman, and a wild mushroom ragout soup and heirloom tomato salad (with fresh apple sorbet on top) for the lady. While lunches remained cheap, yet tasty (I’d suck someone’s dick to have that gyro stand near my house), another solid dinner was had at 221 South Oak Bistro. Once again munching in the open air on a fine Saturday night, we both inhaled a delightful selection of sausages (elk garlic, spicy pork, duck mushroom, and chicken cranberry), while my entrée featured red fish and Cajun inspired shrimp with spinach and sweet potato pancakes. Brooke, also craving fish, enjoyed the purple potato crusted halibut. We spent a small fortune, but something had to wash the stink away from some truly bad cinema. Though for one sneak preview in particular, I’m not sure any kitchen under the sun could have concocted a dish to save the day.

Fortunately for us, Friday night’s offerings at the Chuck Jones were two films high on our must-see list, so our anger was, for the moment, tempered by joy. First up, Michael Hazanavicius’ supremely winning The Artist, a film that sounds like a cross between Singin’ in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard, evoking the cinematic period of transition between the silent era and the dreaded “talkies”. Here, though, the result is itself a silent movie, with crisp, eye-popping black and white cinematography and the occasional title card to keep things honest. But it’s more than an immersion in nostalgia (no fondness for “the good old days” is assumed); it’s a rare tribute to a lost medium whose time has, thankfully, passed. Without any sense that Hollywood turned an unfortunate corner once it insisted that its movie characters speak to audiences, The Artist, via the story of silent star George Valentin (Cannes’ Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin) suggests that the entertainment of its day – then and now – holds currency and the ability to captivate, but as a fleeting craft, it need not last beyond its own brief time in the sun. Obvious, yes, but no one’s looking back. It’s why terms like “dated” don’t seem to matter when one considers that at bottom, they help us gain insight into the time period on display and, more importantly, what had the power to move audiences. We no longer want our motion pictures in quite this way, but that’s more a testament to our evolving humanity than any sign of cultural decay. People like George are left behind, but not much else is.

Valentin is a star, an action hero renegade with charm to burn, and his public appearances command huge crowds and adoring press. All of his films are by-the-numbers trash, of course, but he inhabits them with grace and charisma, lending their mass appeal a singular touch (few are as deadly with an arched eyebrow). Once the age of talk begins – represented here by new sensation Peppy Miller (her meteoric rise is a well-played showbiz cliché) – Valentin is pushed aside with brutal disregard, but how could it be otherwise? We care for him, of course, because it’s instinctive to the human animal to empathize with those for whom better days are not ahead, but Peppy is no villain. She is but the next stage of development, and she too will eventually find a hollow conclusion to her pursuits. It’s to the film’s credit that Peppy is not demonized as an opportunist, nor is she without talent, and deep down, it’s likely that Valentin agrees. Predictably, his gut reaction is to insist that the silent era is not yet over (he pours all of his resources into a ridiculous epic entitled Tears of Love), and he smugly declares, “I am an artist! I am not a puppet!” Is he right? Can a peddler of the formulaic be an artist? And can one ever hope to aspire to such lofty pursuits if one’s craft does not survive the time in which it is created?

Thankfully, The Artist comes down firmly on the side of the affirmative, insisting that the act of creation, for good or ill, need not last throughout the ages. If tradition is the illusion of permanence, permanence itself is the illusion of value, as anyone can speak to who has watched with disgust as great thinkers and talents have disappeared into the ether in favor of hacks with great PR machines. We are wrong to assume that if it’s still around after 300 years, it must always be good, and we are just as incorrect to argue that absence connotes a much-deserved burial. So yes, Valentin was and is an artist; our judgment of him, then, is only a matter of degree. His star may not shine as brightly as, say, Peppy’s, but as their final dance demonstrates, there’s room enough on stage for both. The Artist is clever, wise, and spirited (look for a truly awesome dream sequence), and despite hanging on a bit too long (a few redundancies creep in during the last 15 minutes), it transcends its gimmick to become a moving ode to everyone who straps on a pair of shoes for our amusement. The opening night crowd (ours was the first in the United States to see it) seemed to agree, granting the closing credits a roar we haven’t heard in years. Keep an eye out for this little gem, and don’t be surprised when it becomes the first silent movie to be nominated for an Oscar in over eighty years.

Later that same evening, we shared a packed theater with Werner Herzog and his clingy female companion for his new documentary Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life. Forsaking the odd and the esoteric, Herzog has now gone a little too far in the other direction, the result of which is solid as a rock, but a bit too easily digestible for those expecting the standard Herzog head-scratcher. Here, the German filmmaker considers a triple homicide in Conroe, Texas, and the resulting trial that ended with one of the killers being executed. For the film’s first half, it all seemed a tad Dateline NBC-ish, with a full account of the crime itself, the perpetrators, and the victims. Herzog visits the crime scene, the men in jail, and law enforcement, all of whom recount the tragedy with the expected precision. It is when Herzog visits with surviving family members that the emotional wall is broken, and we see the shattered lives that are left in the wake of a senseless murder. Again, nothing groundbreaking here, but Herzog does insist on pushing his subjects to speak to their grief in full measure, such as when the daughter of the woman slain (she is also the sister of another victim) wanders into the thicket of her almost comically sad family tree, whose branches are teeming with overdoses, suicides, deaths-by-train, and numerous felons. She’s a testament to the maxim that in life, there are those who just can’t seem to escape trouble. It will always find them whatever the cost.

Herzog being Herzog, there is more method to his madness than simply rounding out a case of an auto theft gone horribly wrong. He wants to investigate the ritual of state murder, so he visits with prison employees, and shows us the very room where the convicted take their last breath. With clinical detachment, Herzog, himself an opponent of the death penalty, shows how the very process of execution destroys everyone involved, with casualties mounting far beyond the death house doors. Without saying so, we know that Herzog finds humanity essentially homicidal, and it stands to reason that we would find a relatively “clean” way of ending life, if only to cover the tracks of our barbarism. Additionally, Herzog opens the gates of a truly odious trash heap in Conroe, a town where these types of crimes just seem to crop up with disturbing inevitability. Consider that one gentleman – or should I say, typical resident – in particular who testifies to the rage of Jason Burkett, one of the killers who, without surprise, declares his innocence. As he rambles on, pausing only to lob tobacco juice in any number of directions, he reveals his own prison stint, now-conquered illiteracy, and encounter with a foot-long screwdriver. We laugh so as not to cry, but yes, we laugh just the same. While Herzog often finds great dignity in the natural world, his human subjects often leave us contemplating a long jump off a short pier.

Herzog also spends much time with Michael Perry, the baby faced butcher who, in the closing moments of the film, is given his fatal injection in Huntsville. Perry also considers himself a victim, and his final words are accusatory, as if a man responsible for ending three lives because of his lust for an automobile had a side worth considering. Herzog does not travel down the road of his possible innocence (the film proves pretty conclusively that he is the man), nor does it join a candlelight vigil for his stay of execution. Instead, Herzog wants to allow the voice of the condemned to occupy a space in time, almost as a constant reminder that in some fashion, the dead speak to us always. There’s also the bizarre case of Melyssa, the legal representative of Mr. Burkett, who eventually falls in love with the killer, though she too believes him to be innocent. It’s especially disturbing to listen as she tries to separate herself from the others – the “sick ones” – who obsess over and eventually marry the infamous. She’s as loony as the rest, of course, which is perhaps the point. Find me a murder, and anything in the vicinity (and surely anyone) will be swallowed alive by madness. In Conroe and elsewhere, survivors are that in name only, long ago having surrendered their resemblance to the living.

Saturday, for several reasons, was a bitch, not least of which was the ungodly hour at which we woke. But we had an 8:30am screening, which meant getting in line just after sun-up. We were particularly nasty this day, and we still had a movie to endure. The film in question, Albert Nobbs, was this year’s requisite gender-bender (count on at least one), which is usually the shortest, easiest route to an Oscar nomination. This time, it’s Glenn Close (who also co-wrote and co-produced) who has decided that no mere character will do – one must dress like a man to get the Academy’s attention. Since Glenn wasn’t likely to play a retard, a slave, or, channeling Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger, a retarded slave, she deepened her tones, donned a suit, and became Mr. Nobbs, a proper Irish butler at the tail end of the Victorian era. Sure, Close looks the part – she also resembles the love child of Robin Williams and J.D. Rockefeller – but once the gimmick wears off, what are we left with? Could Close move beyond the trappings of a turn of the century Tootsie and channel any unexpected insight? The audience seemed to think so, but I was unmoved. By comparison, Anthony Hopkins’ turn as Mr. Stevens in The Remains of the Day was an ass-grabbing, bourbon-swilling extrovert who wore every emotion on his impeccably tailored sleeve.

The primary objection to Albert Nobbs, then, is the fact that he/she is so bloody dull, and when the character is talking to himself about saving money for a tobacco shop (these conversations are clearly meant to convey information we’d otherwise lose, but they’re awkward nonetheless), we’d rather be in the other room watching paint dry. Nothing really happens in the course of this tale, which isn’t automatically bad, but here, we have nothing to cling to once we accept that Nobbs is what an Irish lass becomes when there aren’t any jobs available. Sure, there might be some discussion regarding identity and sexual politics, but the characters are so poorly drawn and the screenplay so muddled that we end up waiting for Nobbs to die, which he does, though in a manner just as inconsequential as his breathing hours. If there’s drama afoot, it comes in the form of Hubert Page (Janet McTeer), who discovers Nobbs’ secret after having to spend the night in his room. Yes, Page is yet another woman passing as a man (would the only two such creatures really meet so conveniently at some Dublin hotel?), and frankly, s/he’s more believable. McTeer is like Jack Lambert with tits, and after she bares the suckers, we instantly discover that yes, if push came to shove, we’d fuck the shit out of this Steel Curtain stalwart.

Telluride often surprises guests with unknown documentaries about equally unknown subjects, but with Becoming Bert Stern, the man of the hour seems to have been unknown to me alone. Stern is, quite obviously, a world-famous photographer, and while I instantly recognized many of the shots on display, I had never known their author. Here, in a crisply made, authoritative account, the entirety of the Stern legacy is laid bare, and he’s more than up to the task. Stern started humbly, almost accidentally, and his talent with the camera became apparent by the 1950s after a stint at Look magazine. Within a few years, he revolutionized advertising, taking Smirnoff national in a way previously unknown. Until Stern brought artistic energy to marketing, ads were drab and top heavy with explanatory text; he gave products life with symbolic heft, emotion, and clarity of presentation. As never before, consumers could extract an identity from what they purchased, and Stern brought a hip sensibility that belied the sterile, corporate image of the craft. Even after moving to Vogue, Stern’s eye deepened, highlighting the allure of the female form in an age not yet ready to accept empowered sexuality from the other side of the table.

While the strength and excitement of the documentary lie in the series of images we see (his work is stellar), this is far from a mere puff piece. Stern, like all artists, is an egomaniac, and his love of women, endlessly conveyed, both verbally and visually, masks an insidious misogyny that, at bottom, reduces women to the pleasure they can bring to him. He gets involved, cheats, gets married, cheats some more, gets divorced, and moves on, and it’s always apparent that Stern just can’t help himself. His most interesting “affair” just might be the one never consummated, however, involving Marilyn Monroe. Stern was taken by her, naturally, after the “last sitting” shoot mere weeks before her death, and his photos remain iconic to this day. And when we receive access to his “private stash”, we see that for every artistic bent, there is an undercurrent of obsession. An entire museum could be fashioned around his negatives alone. If there’s a drawback to the movie, it stands at the feet of the director, Shannah Laumeister, who has known Stern for over thirty years. Too often, her own ego takes hold, interfering with the subject, and for all the naked women we see, her own tits are featured most often. Stern himself might need Shannah, but we most assuredly do not.

More often than not, Telluride’s sneak previews are a cause for celebration. Not this time (so much for the rumors of Carnage). When it was announced that we would be the first audiences in the world to see Jim Field-Smith’s Butter, we were not amused, as we already heard the talk that many believed it would be this year’s Juno. If only. While I hated that movie with an unparalleled glee, I would have gladly sat through it a dozen more times had I been spared a collision with Butter, now and likely forever the worst film I have ever seen at this festival. Curiously, I demand laughs from my comedies, and here, there are none to be had, even though the theater often displayed an opposing reaction. Sure, the chuckles became less intense as time passed, but presumably mentally sound human beings were discovering a form of amusement, and as such, I have rarely been this frightened for the future of this country. If you must know, the movie involves Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner), a Sarah Palin-type whose only love in life appears to be watching her husband win the annual butter-carving competition at Iowa’s state fair. Why, he’s done The Last Supper in butter, has he not? After being asked to excuse himself from any awards this time around, Laura decides that she must uphold the Pickler legacy and win one for the Gipper.

And while it is true that those from the Midwest are insane, this movie’s satirical sensibilities lie somewhere between heavy-handed and retarded, with an emphasis on caricature and stereotype. There isn’t a single noteworthy observation to be had, and if you needed this movie to know that conservatives like hookers, you’re also in need of the sort of institution no longer allowed under the law. Broad as a barn and painfully puddle-deep, Butter is obvious and stupid, that is, when it isn’t substituting gratuitous profanity like a 6^th grader having just learned how to shock his parents. A better movie not made by the sub-mental set would have mined the potential subtext of butter carving, perhaps exploring the cultural origins of small town oddities and rituals, but instead, the screenplay thought it would be more inventive to introduce a Wise Minority Figure into the mix, this time in the form of an orphaned black girl. Her narration often talks about how “crackers be crazy”, and while that might indeed be true, it’s about as insightful as the plot device that insists we’re all but an encounter away with a dark-skinned savant from getting our houses in order. Olivia Wilde’s turn as Brooke, a stripper with a heart of gold and a mouth like a sailor, is nowhere near an original creation, but she’s a rare spark of life in this otherwise bloated corpse of cinematic crap.

As Sunday dawned, we had been pleasantly surprised by the relative lack of awe regarding Mr. Clooney and his descent from the clouds, but this would soon end in a flurry of revolting hero worship last seen when The Beatles invaded New York. While waiting at the Palm Theater (a rare in-town screening) for a noon show, Clooney and his handlers came out the front after his tribute. Within seconds, women swooned, men screamed, and a good dozen fanatics could be seen running in Clooney’s direction, as if fleeing the collapse of the Twin Towers. Cameras were suddenly everywhere, and from every corner of the parking lot, one could hear various sobs and hysterical ravings. “He waved at me!”, one cried, while another breathlessly remarked on George’s appearance. “Oh my god, he said hello!”, another yelped, odd indeed given that this was otherwise a grown-ass man. Even as his car made its way to the exit, the mob acted as if they were in the presence of royalty, tearing at their hair and all but jumping on the hood in a half-naked frenzy. In all our time here, we had never seen anything quite like it, and if a single theme dominated the weekend, it was that all were evermore under Clooney’s spell. With this kind of reception, the man would be a fool not to promote his films here from now on. When the first statement from any random person’s lips pertained to a George anecdote (“I hear he closed the bar last night!”), you know you’re in an altered landscape.

Using one of our two non-Mountain Village selections, we spent the next few hours with Lynne Ramsey’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, arguably our most anticipated offering of the weekend. Having loved the book, we felt that at last, we’d be assured of the masterpiece we craved, even if more honest reflections knew it couldn’t possibly measure up. For the first hour or so, however, it spooled forth with an unsettling grace, and I damn near started to believe it could pull it off from start to finish. The style is fragmented and semi-conscious, as if half-remembered dreams and raw emotions are forced to butt heads for supremacy. The mood was disjointed and dark, and as an assessment of the main character, it seemed confident and assured. Playing Eva, Tilda Swinton is appropriately glassy-eyed and insecure, as her character is one of the few in any context who, while still sane and reasonable, appears to lack a genuine maternal instinct. During these opening blasts of confusion, Eva is more than uncertain about her new role as “mommy”; she is adrift without the requisite knowledge to keep up that all-too-delicate juggling act. This is not simply a woman thrust into the abyss all new mothers share, but rather a confrontation with, and confirmation of, a genuine, unapologetic selfishness that is, refreshingly, borne not of meanness, but simply the desire to pursue an alternative. Eva has traveled the world as a young woman and new wife, and her gifts lie in her ability to describe her journeys by putting pen to paper.

Admittedly, the book is more careful about exploring Eva’s complex inner life, and as presented in the movie, it could be assumed that Eva is simply ill-equipped and unwilling to put in the hard work, rather than expressing a wholesale rejection of the motherhood precept. Both Ramsey and Swinton do their best within the limitations of the medium, but newcomers might dismiss this character without fully considering the radical implications. Still, an appropriate sense of dread is crafted, even if Kevin, once he moves from infant to young man, seems just a little less than real throughout. From the start, he’s perhaps too immersed in the bad seed ideal, even if one of the book’s themes considered whether or not kids were always, by necessity, a product of their environment. As presented, Kevin just might be the emotionless manipulator he is because mommy failed to dish out kisses and hugs along with her quiet judgment, when in fact nothing in the book argues for so simplistic a conclusion. In fact, even as Kevin blooms into a full-fledged killer, the film upholds the book’s failure to provide answers. Why do kids kill? Who can we blame for school massacres? At no point does anyone chime in with undue arrogance, as this is less Kevin’s story than Eva’s, body and soul. There’s a reason, after all, that Kevin spares his mother alone among everyone close to him. The film doesn’t hit the mark on this as well as it could, but Kevin actually has a begrudging respect for Eva, for in some perverse fashion, both share a genuine lack of empathy. In some odd way, Kevin is returning Eva to her once pristine state without familial obligations.

The film also missteps in making literal that which holds more power as an imagined event, such as the actual killings (a few soundtrack selections also play to the cheap seats). Given where the film is tending, the murders need not have been presented at all, as the bits of pieces of lead-in were enough to take us only so far without having to complete the picture. Showing even small moments of Kevin’s actions takes us away from Eva’s perception of them. We should only view Kevin as she does, for our opinions as an audience should not be as judges and jury for the eventual trial. Even a key scene near the end involving the deaths of Eva’s husband and daughter is too heavy-handed, almost as if the director doesn’t trust us to know what lies beyond the patio door. We Need to Talk About Kevin, all told, remains a modest success, if only because it draws us in so convincingly from the opening passages that presage fear and loss. In a sense, it’s about the only way one could hope to make a film with school shootings as a central dramatic event, dealing less with “survivor’s guilt” and the scars left behind than the sort of person so afflicted from the outset that what’s to follow merely confirms the initial doubts. Eva, for many, was broken well before Kevin, though I would add that the cracks only started to appear once she gave in, ever so gently, to the pressures all women share. Riding out her instincts would have been the only way to avoid the disaster to come.

Later that evening, at last, came the gem of the festival. With gritty simplicity and raw emotional intensity, director Steve McQueen’s Shame becomes the Last Tango in Paris for a new era; a sadly perverse gutter ballet that wallows in sexual addiction and untethered humanity in ways rarely explored in the usually cautious world of cinema. And while Michael Fassbender’s Brandon is solid, he’s no Paul, though to ask anyone to compete with Marlon Brando at the peak of his powers is an exercise in futility. Still, where Last Tango drifts (every scene without Paul is mired in tedium), Shame remains focused, never wavering from Brandon’s punishing descent into a hell of his own making. Above all, this is a work of behavior, where plot devices and obligatory story turns are left behind as scraps of inevitability to be picked over by less gifted filmmakers. Shorn of extraneous detail – we are here and now, as if future and past were luxuries lost somewhere along the way – the film builds, pushes, and literally invades our space with encounters almost offensively private. It’s no great revelation to expose the self-loathing and pain at the core of obsessive promiscuity, but McQueen isn’t showing his cards, preferring instead to leave us with the nakedness of Brandon’s twisted nature. He’s more than a slab of beef; he’s already been prepped, gutted, and bled dry for sport.

For once, I was excited from the opening bell, as the first scene aboard a subway offers a lesson to us all on how to build character with no words and few gestures. As Brandon studies a woman sitting nearby, no dialogue is exchanged, but the glances are so witheringly seductive that the woman practically orgasms on screen. Using ambient noise, long takes, and subtle movement, an entire seduction from start to finish takes place right before our eyes. The woman says absolutely nothing before departing from the train, but we know exactly what she’s thinking. She’s gone over everything in her own mind, and we cheer the result. Such bravura filmmaking is rare amongst new filmmakers, and it does not surprise us that McQueen has worked as a visual artist. He possesses a rare talent for composition, and his use of color and music instill the proceedings with a flair beyond the commonplace. In other hands, the film might suffer from familiarity. Here, it’s practically the opening salvo of a cinematic revolution.

Needless to say, the film is saturated with sex (and yes, Fassbender will inspire a great deal of penis envy), and while most of what we see remains curiously joyless, it’s less the opinion that anonymous intercourse is always bad than the particular experiences of a man who long ago lost any other method of communication. This is no morality play, where bed-hopping is automatically a sign of the devil’s work or even a damaged soul, but simply Brandon’s specific arc of character. Larger issues may indeed be at work, but at this time and place, a single human being has channeled the whole of his life into a crippling preoccupation that substitutes for actual living. Consider Brandon’s boss in contrast, even while he flirts, seduces, and beds assorted women. His methods are a ritualized, almost comical game, and a foolish one at that, but one that insists on a set of rules seemingly agreed upon at some unspecified date. Brandon, on the other hand, operates from need alone, and mere compulsion pushes him into these otherwise distasteful interactions with others. Even the arrival of his sister, Sissy (an extremely sharp Carey Mulligan), is not enough to right the ship, as her pathetic state simply distracts Brandon from the only reality he could ever know. She too is in pain, but he’d rather not be reminded of the consequences over which he claims to have no control. If anything, she’s a version of Brandon he’d like to forget. Shame, fortunately, deserves only to be remembered.

***

Her arrival is marked by gnashing, bucking, and a jetting jaw so sharp it could slice an artery. She is Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), the daughter of wealthy Russian Jews, and she is in town, so to speak, to begin treatment with the up-and-coming Swiss doctor, Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender, once again). Using the controversial new method known as the “talking cure”, Jung draws out the increasingly hysterical Sabina until, well, she spills forth with a rush of sexual dysfunction. She was beaten by a tyrannical father, took pleasure from withholding defecation, and, as luck would have it, eventually expresses a grave desire to bed the naïve young doctor. And so begins David Cronenberg’s sublime new psycho-drama, A Dangerous Method, a film destined to appear on my year-end ten-best list for sheer entertainment value alone. Expecting a dry, pointless exercise, I was instead treated to a witty, sly, sexually charged battle royale between the two great giants of psychoanalysis, Dr. Jung and his more famous father figure, Sigmund Freud. As played by Viggo Mortensen (as if channeling Paul Muni), Freud is an arrogant, cigar-chomping bastard with brilliance to burn. He’s all crisp suit and well-manicured beard, and as such, he’s destined to drive a stake through the heart of his young protégé. Their early friendship (begun as a marathon 12-hour conversation) leads to much more, only to disintegrate in the face of conflicting opinions (it seems that Jung is a little too fond of mysticism). Freud was right, of course, and his assessment of Jung blisteringly accurate, as the pair manages to inhabit a wrestling ring like two intellectuals warring for the soul of mankind.

Sabina successfully seduces Jung, needless to say, and their passionate encounters run the gamut from heavy petting to not one, but two highly-charged spankings (in fairness, one is more accurately labeled a whipping). Jung’s painfully proper moustache always appears on the verge of violent indulgence, yet he manages to rationalize his infringement on the doctor/patient separation with the expected hilarious hypocrisy. He rages against Freud for reducing the whole of the human animal to sexual repression, yet proves the wise Austrian’s theories correct time and time again. Again, I have no idea how historically accurate any of this is, nor do I care, and for once, a movie involving iconic figures throws caution to the wind and insists on having fun. Instead of studious aspirations, the film relies on verbal combat, spitting out fascinating ideas and theories without regard for the audience’s ability to follow along. Some dismissed the movie as “talky”, which more often than not damns the critic as simpleminded, rather than accurately describing the verbiage on display. I mean, this is Sigmund Freud, the man who brought the penis front and center to any and all debates.  Who on earth would want him to remain tight-lipped? Years pass, journeys begin and end, and throughout, despite the brief 99-minute running time, we feel sated. Tightly, hysterically wound, the whole thing flirts with fabulous disaster by burning the rule book for highlighting the past. Against the odds, it almost singlehandedly salvaged the festival.

The Maldives is a bizarre collection of 1,190 coral islands spread over 90,000 square kilometers in the Indian Ocean. Approximately 314,000 people inhabit this most improbable of nations, when a random view from the air speaks to the impossibility of any civilization whatsoever. How did people get here? And who decided it was a fine idea to stay? Despite its complex geographic attributes, it has a fascinating history all the same, with the usual dictators, coups, and political violence of a nation a hundred times its size. Declaring its independence from the United Kingdom is 1965, the modern history of the Maldives has been a predictable, sorry lot indeed, that is, until democracy triumphed and Mohammed Nasheed assumed the presidency several years ago. The Island President, a new documentary from the makers of Lost Boys of Sudan, charts Nasheed’s rise from political prisoner to proud leader, though it’s not the overthrow of a brutal regime that is this film’s primary subject. While the Maldives is no longer threatened by an oppressive military and state-sponsored torture, it will almost certainly face extinction from a much more daunting foe — climate change. You see, the Maldives is at sea level. Every last man, woman, and child stands at the brink with no room for error. Any significant rise in ocean levels and this nation will cease to exist. And yes, the oceans are rising.

Nasheed, almost alone among world leaders, is fully devoted to the issue of global warming. He makes no apologies, pulls no punches, and asks not for delayed consideration, but immediate policy changes. He knows that unless carbon emissions are lowered, we’ve condemned his country to a death sentence, and he’s not exactly excited about presiding over a funeral. We follow Nasheed (unprecedented access is granted) to a United Nations conference where lip service is paid, but tangible actions fall under the weight of useless rhetoric. He’s heard it all before, yet here we stand. The big daddy, though, remains the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, where leaders from 192 countries gathered to discuss stemming the tide of the planet’s disintegration. As expected, China remained the primary roadblock to honest reform, though the United States was (and is) hardly a champion of radical change. We’ll only go so far, then fold like a tent when negotiations get tough. But yes, it’s ultimately about China. In more ways than one, they are the ultimate representation of where our planet is tending. And when you’re the sort of country wholly uninterested in public health, democracy, human rights, and living wages, it’s not a good idea to remain beholden to such a devilish master. Nasheed’s passion at the conference is infectious, yes, but also a little sad, as few power brokers are going to alter global policy for such an “insignificant” player. But the Maldives is our canary in the coal mine, and we ignore them – and Nasheed – at our peril.

Alexander Payne’s The Descendants argues that all of us owe a debt to ancestor and offspring alike; not of the financial variety, but a simple gentleman’s agreement to live well. Honestly, at the very least. George Clooney is Matt King, a successful attorney who, thanks to the obligatory workaholic tendencies, reaches a point in his life when he’s set adrift in a sea of doubt and guilt. As always, there’s a catalyst – here, the serious injury of his wife – and after learning enough about the comatose spouse to know that she’s a scoundrel and not at all the woman he married, he sets out to become a father again to his two predictably sassy daughters. Admittedly, even in the re-telling, Payne’s latest hardly sounds like a film I would ever fight to see, but there’s enough here to warrant a recommendation, even if the final product is less than the sum of its parts. Taken in sections, the film leaves viewers with some terrific set pieces; not hard to do when the whole thing is set in Hawaii. Sure, my attention wandered from time to time, as I couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty of the islands (and arguably the greatest collection of loud Hawaiian shirts ever assembled for a motion picture), but I always drifted back, tethered to the story by strong performances and a willingness not to get too sticky about the whole thing.

At bottom, Payne wants his heroes to grow up and become men, and that’s no less the case this time around. Fortunately, King is not a bad guy, just the sort who would quickly defer all child-rearing decisions to the mother. He’s warm, charming, and tough-minded when necessary, and we never get the sense that he’s in love with money despite his obvious success. But he is flawed first and foremost because he hasn’t put his daughters first, and that’s enough these days to produce a screenplay about your redemption. There’s even a side story involving an extremely valuable patch of ancestral land that may or may not be sold, but that’s less a loose end than an additional opportunity for King to do the right thing. I hated his final decision, of course, because I couldn’t possibly imagine turning away heaping piles of cash in favor of youthful camping memories, but that’s why I remain in my predicament and the least attractive subject for a story of any kind. Still, I appreciated the realism regarding the siblings, the switcheroo whereby the wife is the no good cheat, and how the characters deal with death. At just about every point, they speak and react as people would, not what a screenplay dictates. Though inferior to Payne’s two previous efforts, The Descendants is a pleasant, easy ride with no heavy lifting; just a decent story well told.

BEST: Shame

WORST: Butter

AN ACTOR TO REMEMBER: Michael Fassbender, Shame and A Dangerous Method

AN ACTRESS TO REMEMBER: Carey Mulligan, Shame

AN ACTOR TO FORGET: The State of Iowa, Butter

AN ACTRESS TO FORGET: Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

BEST SET OF TITS: Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

WORST SET OF TITS: Keira Knightley, A Dangerous Method

BEST SEX SCENE: Doggie-Style by the Window Atop NYC, Shame

WORST SEX SCENE: John C. Reilly Getting Blown, We Need to Talk About Kevin

WORST POST-SCREENING INTERVIEW: Todd McCarthy with Alexander Payne, bringing a whole new meaning to “awkward silence”

MOST APPROPRIATE INTERVIEW:  Leonard Maltin with Glenn Close, as both understand playing a part and living a lie

QUESTION I NEVER THOUGHT I’D ASK MYSELF: “Is that blood on the comforter?”

MOVIE I WISH I HAD SEEN: The Turin Horse

SO WHY DIDN’T YOU?: At no point could I have squeezed in a 33-hour Hungarian meditation on cruelty with approximately six words of dialogue

SHORT FILM WORTH A DAMN: First Interview

SHORT FILM WORTH SHIT: Zergut

THREE WORDS TO SUM IT UP: “So very tired”