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The Homesman (2014)
Admiration for This Movie, Plus Questions About Plot Asked and Answered
Many Potential Spoilers!
First, this movie was very good for its torrents of highly exciting stories, for keeping a consistent, distant perspective on events, and for the dramatic performances of the lead performers.
Second, here I just address some technical questions about plot, questions that do not much affect the value of the stories. Somewhat difficult to understand and challenging to credulity were the following:
A. Cuddy's suicide following the first night of sexual relations in her life implies either that the sex was very rough being the first time and coming from a crude man or, the opposite, that it was overwhelming and the woman was filled with regrets for not having had sexual relations all along or, most likely,that she could not handle pleasure without even an iota of emotional affection from the man.
B. The assumption of the highly experienced George Briggs that money from a small bank on the frontier would have to be sound implies either that he had to believe the reward the good Mary Bee Cuddy offered him was destined to be genuine or we're just supposed to believe that in all his years on 19th century western frontiers, George Briggs rarely encountered banks going bust.
C. Brigg's failure at the end to consider going back to the minister's wife, explaining that his money proved irredeemable, and asking for some value for his horses and wagons implies that either he feared that news about his past could soon catch up with him if he remained too long in town or that he felt somehow responsible for Cuddy's suicide and really sought redemption by gifting those possessions to the church.
Third, I address other customer reviewer's questions:
A. Someone wonders why the hotel keeper refused to allow Briggs and his women to stay at the hotel. The reasons were matters of common sense. Briggs appeared to be a man traveling alone with women on the frontier and failing to offer any description of his relations to them. Was he a Mormon and the women his wives? Was he kidnapping them? Were they his prostitutes? In all of these possible scenarios, the hotel keeper had good reason to believe that his property would not be very safe and secure if he allowed them to remain overnight. However, he demonstrated an inability to accept the possibility that the visitor was not good at explaining himself and an inability to forge any sort of compromise—for instance, at least sell some food. Any relations with a weird human were seen by the hotel keeper as a threat somehow. He just wanted the man to get going. This is not unusual for hotel keepers in our day either—very conventionalized sort.
B. Also asked was why women in the town went insane and, too, why the men did not. But the old west was a few years before women achieved social equality and were able to secure work in various professional fields. Typically, they were kept to home and hearth and kept emotionally weak and dependent. The movie then shows that the town recently experienced weather conditions that created crop failures. One of the women expressly expounds upon the theme. The bleak surroundings, the social isolation of life on the prairie, and then, on top of that, the inability to get food for themselves and their young children became too much hardship for them to endure. But, anyway, I would not say that the husbands appeared to be models of rationality either.
Larry Crowne (2011)
Vivid, Ordinary, Middle-Class America
Top stars play in a film about ordinary Americans with sensible ambitions and limited opportunities. We do not attend movies only to escape but sometimes to discover more about our realities--this is the fresh underlying assumption. Yes, the moped gang was an undeveloped idea. It's true that Roberts' husband was not played with the requisite corruption. But Roberts herself gave her character depth and vitality just as if she were playing one of those melodramatic characters she has liked to depict.
Doubtless many professors have lost spouses to one form or other of electronic distractions. It is in that context that she welcomes and appreciates interest from a downsized box store employee.
Coursework in speech, rhetoric, and communication may be new to many in the audience, and Roberts shows the way that it might be given.
But what makes this story even more American are the childish excesses of emotion: desire for vengeance fulfilled at the sight of one's husband arrested; merrily sending text messages in class with a mental two-year-old female student; and a professor who acts like she believes that precise feelings are communicable through kissing.
I definitely want to take a course on speech after watching this film, but I would prefer to take it in ... New York, London, or Berlin ... anywhere but California!
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
A Sample of a Man's Freedom
The main character is free because he gets to drop out of one relation and pick up another easily -- from work to travel, from love commitment to an affair, again from a romance to an affair, from one residence to another, and, finally, from a romance to the road. It's a bit like being Americans, who, at that time, were the most mobile people, moving on average 19 times per lifetime. So, the film is a demonstration of main character Dupea's mobility, a sample of his life. Maybe it embodies the values of the hippies of his day, who were often on the road and who celebrated freedom -- without conception of a society against which to rebel. No, the main characters are strictly devoted to addressing their challenges, and the hitchhiker complainant about filth is designed to mock as pretentious that rebellion against establishment. Anyway, which are the "five"? Probably it's Dupea's girlfriend, the two bowling alley flirts, his sister-in-law, and then, mysteriously ... himself? Yes, himself, as one need not worry about getting into any sort of relationship with him and all that that could imply.
Gran Torino (2008)
Useful Small Messages
The great virtue of a movie in which the development and message really don't make you think is that it can be a medium for small messages along the way (in jurisprudence, "obiter dicta"). These do not decide the merit of the movie overall. In Gran Torino are some useful small messages.
Haircuts are useful for drawing the line between acceptable appearance and looking like a wild hermit. When Walt Kowalski, the Clint Eastwood character, is reproached by his barber for being "too cheap" to get haircuts often enough, men have to consider the value of a good haircut. This even though the dialogue is also humorous.
Some members of the audience, particularly when the economy has been heading south, do try to budget by postponements of haircuts. The glory day of long hair wearing is, alas, no more. When youth in Eastwood's 1970s wore long hair, it actually stood for some transcending social cause. Nowadays, that cause can be only music, rebellion against an unidentified norm, narcotics, or---saving dough. Even if one is in rebellion, this movie raises the question, Is it clear to all who look upon the wild hermit looking individual as to exactly who or what the long hair opposes? Is it even vaguely apparent to anyone as to what the long hair might oppose? Usually, the offensive appearance and the vagueness of message combine to discourage busy people from seeking more knowledge of the individual and finding out.
Youth in America are discouraged very often from talking and relating to kids their age, older adults, and persons of the opposite gender. This movie indicates this along the way, too, since it does not anywhere suggest that Thao, to whom Kowalski gives advice, is suffering from a shyness that is common.
Thao is shy because he must speak to girls but his mother and a sister are raising him---the father is absent from the household. This is common nowadays. The presence of the father in the household was a cause defeated by the insistence that women are perfectly capable of raising children on their own, a cause of the women's rights movement.
Many other youth in the country are handicapped by technological entrapment. Makers of cellphones and Ipods provide almost no instructions on when and where to use their devices, although their instructions on how to make them function can distract users from speaking about other things that actually matter. We thus have among us many youth who, whenever they feel any uncertainty as to what to say, are amply encouraged by advertisement to turn on their cellphone or hook their Ipod headphones around their head.
It is along the way that Eastwood also indicates this social failure of our youth. Thao is shy, and Kowalski's own granddaughter craves her cellphone during her grandmother's funeral. Kowalski's own efforts to override the social failure amount to little more than an indication that it exists.
Kowalski tries to encourage Thao to speak up among adults. He is trained in a barbershop to talk as offensively as Kowalski to the barber, with humorous rather than useful consequences. Nonetheless, Eastwood wants viewers to believe that it is wise to inculcate aggressive and offensive language in at least shy urban youth. The point is debatable. We wonder whether a movie showing street gang urban youth how to talk cooperatively and politely would be more useful to the cause of social justice that Eastwood's movie promotes.
Flash of Genius (2008)
Admirable For Scientific Information
One of the outstanding virtues of this movie is the didactic sections, informing audiences a little about electrical circuits without interrupting the story. Inventor Bob Kearns and, later, an attorney representing Ford Motor Co. both talk about capacitors and resistors lightly. It enables lay folk to get a peek inside their electrical and electronic devices, even to "spark" curiosity in some viewers. Some of our general fiction literature but our general fiction films rarely are didactic about science, even though they have the capacity to teach--one thinks of John Steinbeck, of Herman Melville before him, and of some contemporary novelists, too.
Notorious (1946)
Flimsy Espionage
Despite the awesome personages devoted to this production, one can't overlook the incredible elements of the espionage that it depicts. A spy takes a wine cellar key off her husband's key ring on the night of a party, knowing its immediate value to him, but waits till the next day to slip it back on the ring. She's suspecting he's using the cellar for an enemy military purpose. This same key is his only way to access the wine cellar that he might decide he needs to visit this night. She shouldn't touch this key tonight. If she takes that risk: (a) she's got to be able to return it to his key ring before he goes for more wine; (b) she's also got to be able to return it before he notices for any reason that his keys feel light; (c) if he notices this cellar key missing after seeing her kiss another man right in front of the cellar door, she must realize that he's going to infer that she's discovered his secret; (d) she must be thinking in the following days about how he would respond if he did realize that she's a spy. Since all of this reasoning is basic, this film as it is asks for too much suspension of disbelief: spies would not behave like this. Beyond reasoning, the failure is also in behavior at public meetings of the Bergman and Grant characters. From the first scene, at the racetrack, they try to look like they are not talking to one another, which fails to hide the fact while publicizing the secret nature of their conversation. The Claude Raines character already knew him. He knows he and his wife are friends. Their attempts to stand alongside one another without turning their heads so much while talking makes it obvious that they're talking about something private. This is like a parody of a spy movie, with inept agents fumbling their work. . . . However, the background music is the best.
Ingrid Bergman's acting is fine, except for the early, drunk scenes. She seems to be trying to imagine what it feels like to be a little drunk, varying her degrees of drunkenness throughout. For instance, after she realizes her companion is a federal agent, all of her sobriety returns in an instant, her focus, and her anger is fully on the alert. She's an amateur at it.
Switchback (1997)
Tense and Exciting but Wants Characters Who Express
Viewers keep trying to predict the action based on scant information about characters. Thus, the story is tense and exciting. From early on, a question is Why is FBI Agent Frank LaCrosse (Dennis Quaid) so determined to find this culprit? At the same time, another question is Why does the serial killer do any of that? And there are other questions at the same time.
But, of course, no murders need to take place in a story for multiple questions, and suspense, to occur -- this genre is not to my taste. It's unrealistic, or else cynical. However, given the story's assumptions, there is a lot of suspenseful questioning in the viewer's mind, some of which is satisfactorily resolved.
It is never clear what could be motivating murderer Bob Goodall (Danny Glover) to do any of this, as there are many games to play, and as Goodall as portrayed by Glover seems to be a well-humored type. Glover's performance is not convincing; with all the pals he has around there, he would have been better as a policeman.
It is resolved why LaCrosse is after Goodall with determination -- pretty much what one guessed. But he is too remote from his relationship with his son. When he reveals this motive to the sheriff after the sheriff has elaborated upon the dinner he prepared, there is more interest in whether he will sit down and eat it than in what he tells about his son. Maybe he didn't even like his son, or maybe he wished he had spent more time with him -- but we get nothing more than a defined relationship and an inevitable act of paternal duty. Maybe LaCrosse just likes adventure -- chasing a train in his car, and physical challenges like that.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
Secret Elitist Elements in "Treasure"
Although they exhibit insightful interpretation of code language, the writers made many decisively elitist choices that fail Disney's promise to serve the public interest. The heroes of this movie are jet-setter multimillionaires or billionaires. They could have been persons of ordinary income, with minor adjustments to the plot. So many American movies focus on the experiences of the topmost income earners as if to say that theirs are the most interesting lives. The affluent heroes claim their desire to solve the mystery is to clear up their family name, a name that is followed in the news media, that originates centuries ago. That is pure poppycock because here, in America, we don't have a nobility, we don't have persons strutting superiority over the peasants on the basis of family plumage, crest, shield. The writers must be anticipating the imminent demise of the inheritance tax, which many Republicans sought to entirely extricate from federal law in our recent past. Then, these valiant heroes cause horrible damage and injury to ordinary populations where they engage in car chases. No punishment is even feared. But when one of them detains the President for a few minutes, even though the President was pleased that it happened, there are these overlong deliberations about the harm to that V.I.P. and the punishment that might be meted out. If the film was intended to be realistic, how do heroes engage in highly destructive car chases without fear of lawsuits for negligence and reckless driving? Or if it is a fantasy, why do the audiences have to be treated to scenes of large fleets of police cars chasing down these heroes as if they were criminals just for having spoken of interesting things privately to the President? It's consistent with the return of a nobility to depict damage to peasants as trivial. Setting aside this objection, this movie is fun to watch, in good taste, and thought-provoking. But nobility is the family value Disney is promoting with "National Treasure".
Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)
Take It Easy With General Motors
This film uses enthusiastic rhetoric about electric cars, mainly the EV1, from an experimental line of them, while failing to give detailed business facts that a car manufacturer must contemplate when deciding whether to go into full production. The film is intended to foster support from the general public for future alternative energy vehicles, which serves the public good. But so would advocating strong federal subsidies for producing zero emissions vehicles. These vehicles would reduce respiratory ailments and its related public health insurance costs. They would alleviate the need for Persian Gulf wars. Thus, the government might want to invest strongly in this type of vehicle. This film, however, finds fault with a profits-oriented manufacturer. But General Motors seeks profits. The film does this without close scrutiny of the manufacturer's business decisions. It thus fails to convert those consumers who are not interested in socioeconomic consequences, who might be anti-social, or who are habituated to the conveniences of the internal combustion engine.
The EV-1 dealership saleswoman Chelsea Sexton admires the looks and feel of the car. But she fails to address ordinary consumer curiosity. Did lessees pay down payment before leasing these vehicles? What was it? About the eventual price of the car, once GM demanded profits from it, she notes that certainly costs would drop as consumer demand rises. But it does not always work that way. Outside the markets of the very wealthy residents of warm states, GM foresaw limited consumer demand. The film never studies how much the price of the car would have to drop to appeal to the public and turn a profit for the manufacturer. It does not address General Motors' concern.
While an experiment, profits from the other GM divisions were subsidizing the EV1. Now, most consumers consider price a priority. GM was willing to subsidize the car when the California Resource Board required just one percent of the company's sales in the state to have zero emissions. But it was diverted into a legal fight when the state was going to require two percent, five percent, and then ten percent. It wasn't profitable yet.
CEO of GM Roger Smith (1981-90) did predict that the (Impact, later renamed EV1) car "is going to represent a great step forward in terms of people going to work, from work, if you don't have to go more than 120 miles a per day". But development of a four-seater was required to boost sales. More design work was also needed (and appears to have been achieved now) to sell a battery-operated vehicle for use in typically cold North American climates.
GM isn't going to take losses while trying to get commuters to pay $3000 to $6000 every year for a two-seater second car for warm weather. Most of the second cars Americans have are probably valued at about $3000. The company was far better off taking those funds and investing them in a more useful vehicle, which they've done, a year after the film was made, in preparing the Chevy Volt for production.
The environmental value of the EV1 was too questionable for consumers and for manufacturers themselves. Bill Reinert, of Toyota USA, points out that "right now in the U.S., we're 55 percent coal. If you go with the EV, you don't end up with a better environmental performance, you end up with a longer tailpipe". This claim, which was widely articulated in the media through the support of petroleum industry organizations, put justifiable doubts in the minds of would-be consumers. Other car companies, like Ford, Honda, and Toyota, saw less consumer interest in electric vehicles than they had anticipated.
Coal-generated electricity was studied by a California commission that the film cites. This commission found that even if you get all of your electricity from coal, there are substantially less emissions from the electric car than from the gasoline engine car. That is overall emissions. Greenhouse gases, which everyone recognizes is the most serious, long-term air quality problem, would be greatly increased. Clean coal technology has never been made practicalthe scrubbers in power plant stacks, of course, cannot remove carbon dioxide; an affordable carbon capture and sequestration technology is still light years away. It's like the hydrogen fueled vehicles that the president's administration keeps hawking.
You can read The New York Times article shown in the discussion of the run-up to the 2004 election, and find that the industry declared the car "impractical" for California and "even worse" in cold climates. But the film does not mention these things. It shows the manufacturer divided in its sentiments for the car, but fails to elaborate.
A junkyard spokesman says he was told that these new cars had to be crushed because they were a line of "test cars" and that "the insurance companies would no longer insure them". But the film does not investigate the claim. Viewers are supposed to be outraged. But what he says raises the question whether due to their immense acceleration, small size, and extremely light weight, they were getting bounced around in small impacts. Granted, GM's public relations were horrible. But doesn't the continuing lease of a vehicle legally require the manufacturer to operate service departments at dealerships? Isn't that a continuing cost liability for GM, when GM could invest instead in improving electric vehicles?
The film does vilify GM, though. This is very satisfying emotionally. We remember the depictions of the GM spokesperson with glee as we fight traffic or do our household chores or yard work or maintain our cars. The principles of vengeance against GM serve us well when we rant against traffic or inflict punishment on the stains of our pots. Well, don't let the benevolence of General Motors get in the way of your vindictiveness! It's a huge corporation, and our sentiments won't hurt it. Our sentiments are, after all, devoted to worthy causes: our environment, our nation, and our walletsand our daily chores.
Key Largo (1948)
Edward G. Robinson, the Gentleman Criminal
Was it the period in American film-making or was it the period in American history? The Edward G. Robinson character wants the soldier visiting this hotel to pilot his boat, and is patient enough to engage in diligent negotiations with him over it. What can he do? He's already told the soldier (Humphrey Bogart) that the alternative is to let his sidekick work him over. Bogart is reticent, but Robinson is willing to variously analyze the situation before undertaking any action. He's very patient, he looks Bogart in the eyes. Who among criminals in contemporary films is sophisticated like that? We--our society--is supposed to progress along with the progress of our technologies, but our films depict criminals like Jack Nicholson in "The Departed". Robinson displays humanity, he displays feelings and depth, and his demise, though desirable, is tragic. Maybe it was the period in American history following that in which many ordinary adolescents drifted into criminality through the opportunities Prohibition provided. Maybe mature, sophisticated persons with the ability to discriminate well the motives and deceptions of the Bogart character did really live, were a real development from the prohibition on the sales and distribution of liquor. Or maybe respect for individual life was more prevalent in the early days of film-making, and Robinson played a likely 1940s criminal. Respect for individual life is more prevalent when people have only each other, mostly only each other, for companionship. There was the hotel proprietor's daughter, like an old-fashioned country girl. . . none of today's sophisticated entertainment technologies. It was possible to just wade out into the harbor, without having to first wade in your home among the myriad options offered by various electronic devices, then.