I admit it. I'm weak. I posture about the incidental contribution of acting to the film enterprise, and then like every other human, I attach my colors to a few of them and follow their artistic lives. In a way, I fall in love.
Oddly, these ones that seduce me aren't necessarily the ones I consider the best, the challenging, lifealtering ones. These women (of course for me they are women) are simply the ones that carefully meld with the forces of the universe and channel them through me. They are my fairy lovers, my guardians, the source of renewal.
This happens when I encounter a film that is intelligently conceived as a saddle for channeling art, with a saddle for the rider. And on that saddle we find someone that knows the score, knows how the machinery of this film works, knows (intuits more likely) how all films work, and knows something about how I work.
This happened for me with "Carrington." It was a simple, layered construction: an artist (the filmmaker) displaying an artist (Emma Thompson) surveying a loved artist from yet another layer, each one unreachable in some ways but the layers penetrated in others.
The thing was constructed for her physical manner. The dialog, as it happens, is ordinary, incidental. I knew in that period of swoon that here was a woman who understood. Here was an actor that not only could create a character, but a film as well. This was someone big enough.
And yes, she did. "Sense and Sensibility" was a triumph of capturing Austin dreaming. And the business about layers in the recent "Pride" must have been hers. Now this.
If I told you the story, you'd gag. As a plot, it is a simple cobbling together of parts from the children's lunchbag, all the way down to a dancing donkey, a pie fight and a Cinderella wedding. But trust me, the story doesn't matter.
The overall shape of the thing is that it is a book being read by a scullery maid, a book that "comes true." At the same time, it is a "Peter Pan" with slightly adjusted context but precisely the same magic. Oh and we last saw this scullery maid as Peter Pan! Both of these notions are exploited by our Emma. She stands in three worlds: the world of the children. (There are several episodes where only she and the children know or recall what has happened.) There's the magical world she came from. More about those two in a moment. And there's the world of us the viewer, which she spends a good half of the time in.
Her magical phrase for us is a simple "Hmm." When she says this, it is not for those around or even for herself, but for us. Her complementary magical phrase, the one that pierces from her magical eye to the world of the kids and their Dad is "I did knock," when of course she hasn't.
What makes all these layers work for us is the way the production design is pulled off. I suppose we have Tim Burton to thank for this particular cinematic device. And it is pulled off much better than in any Burton (or Gilliam) film. Someone had the skill to make the world of the film strange enough to be halfway between reality and McPheeism, but constrained enough that they don't have a humorous identity in themselves.
The last time I saw such architectural sensitivity was in "Casper."
See how that production design in tone carries through the secondary characters. You have Mistress Quickly from Shakespeare, the Mad Duchess cook from Alice in Wonderland, taken straight from the Tenniel etchings (she has it in writing! that the kids cannot enter). Oh, and there's this dance with the dead of our clueless Dad, who literally works with corpses and two Mel Brooks-inspired assistants, who we know are two of the most serious tragic actors alive.
It is all much more subdued than the sharp edges of "Unfortunate Events," and less overtly comic than Burton. It is all there as a sort of expanded costume for our Emma. Our Emma.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Oddly, these ones that seduce me aren't necessarily the ones I consider the best, the challenging, lifealtering ones. These women (of course for me they are women) are simply the ones that carefully meld with the forces of the universe and channel them through me. They are my fairy lovers, my guardians, the source of renewal.
This happens when I encounter a film that is intelligently conceived as a saddle for channeling art, with a saddle for the rider. And on that saddle we find someone that knows the score, knows how the machinery of this film works, knows (intuits more likely) how all films work, and knows something about how I work.
This happened for me with "Carrington." It was a simple, layered construction: an artist (the filmmaker) displaying an artist (Emma Thompson) surveying a loved artist from yet another layer, each one unreachable in some ways but the layers penetrated in others.
The thing was constructed for her physical manner. The dialog, as it happens, is ordinary, incidental. I knew in that period of swoon that here was a woman who understood. Here was an actor that not only could create a character, but a film as well. This was someone big enough.
And yes, she did. "Sense and Sensibility" was a triumph of capturing Austin dreaming. And the business about layers in the recent "Pride" must have been hers. Now this.
If I told you the story, you'd gag. As a plot, it is a simple cobbling together of parts from the children's lunchbag, all the way down to a dancing donkey, a pie fight and a Cinderella wedding. But trust me, the story doesn't matter.
The overall shape of the thing is that it is a book being read by a scullery maid, a book that "comes true." At the same time, it is a "Peter Pan" with slightly adjusted context but precisely the same magic. Oh and we last saw this scullery maid as Peter Pan! Both of these notions are exploited by our Emma. She stands in three worlds: the world of the children. (There are several episodes where only she and the children know or recall what has happened.) There's the magical world she came from. More about those two in a moment. And there's the world of us the viewer, which she spends a good half of the time in.
Her magical phrase for us is a simple "Hmm." When she says this, it is not for those around or even for herself, but for us. Her complementary magical phrase, the one that pierces from her magical eye to the world of the kids and their Dad is "I did knock," when of course she hasn't.
What makes all these layers work for us is the way the production design is pulled off. I suppose we have Tim Burton to thank for this particular cinematic device. And it is pulled off much better than in any Burton (or Gilliam) film. Someone had the skill to make the world of the film strange enough to be halfway between reality and McPheeism, but constrained enough that they don't have a humorous identity in themselves.
The last time I saw such architectural sensitivity was in "Casper."
See how that production design in tone carries through the secondary characters. You have Mistress Quickly from Shakespeare, the Mad Duchess cook from Alice in Wonderland, taken straight from the Tenniel etchings (she has it in writing! that the kids cannot enter). Oh, and there's this dance with the dead of our clueless Dad, who literally works with corpses and two Mel Brooks-inspired assistants, who we know are two of the most serious tragic actors alive.
It is all much more subdued than the sharp edges of "Unfortunate Events," and less overtly comic than Burton. It is all there as a sort of expanded costume for our Emma. Our Emma.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.