Review: "20th Century Women"

Director: Mike Mills
Runtime: 118 minutes

It has taken six years for Mike Mills to make another film. When we last saw him, he delivered Beginners, a touching ode to his father, who came out after decades trapped in the closet. Yet even though that film was all about the father, one of the most intriguing peripheral characters was Georgia (Mary Page Keller), a stand in for Mills' mother. Now, over half a decade later, Mr. Mills is back to put Georgia (now named Dorothea, and sublimely portrayed by Annette Bening) in the spotlight she deserves.

Set in 1979 in Santa Barbara, 20th Century Women both exists as a maternal counterpart to Beginners while also standing firmly on its own. The film is just Mills' third full outing as a director, and his voice has only grown richer in the too-long gap between new work. Beginners charted a man's relationship with his father late in life (in which Mills got to be represented by Ewan McGregor; we should all be so lucky...). 20th Century Women, by contrast, takes the writer/director back to his childhood. Mills' new avatar is Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), the teen son of newly-single mom Dorothea. Aptly, the film opens with the never-seen father's car catching fire, thus firmly severing the last symbolic ties with the past. 

As we're seeing a boy/young man in a highly formative stage, 20th Century Women uses Jamie's place in life to examine those around him. In some ways, it calls to mind another 2016 release - Moonlight - in that it traces a child's growth by embracing a nurture over nature (to a point) idea of how our complete adult selves form. We are largely blank canvases coming into this world, and the people present in our lives at critical moments of change affect our growth in ways both obvious and subtle. 

And so, early on, Dorothea enlists photographer tenant Abbie (a wondrous Greta Gerwig) and childhood friend Julie (Elle Fanning) to help raise her son. "Don't you need a man to raise a man?" asks Julie. To which Dorothea, nonchalantly, replies, "...no, I don't think so." "I think you're what's going to work for him," she says at another point. And even though there is an adult male presence in the form of handyman William (Billy Crudup), the three women turn out to be more than up to the task, in their own ways. The film may set itself up as Jamie's coming-of-age story, but the true subjects are the richly drawn women who lead him through that evolution.

Early on, it's tempting to dismiss the set up as scattered. But as Mills settles into his story's rhythm, the film blossoms. Both as writer and director Mills has grown considerably. His tendency to intercut archival footage and stills into his own material, at times grating in Beginners, feels purposeful and elegant throughout this new endeavor. Mills' films are not necessarily about compartmentalization, but his framing and editing choices (as executed excellently by Leslie Jones) present memories as little moments to be treasured and isolated in curio cases. The lighting accents this notion as well, often capturing moments of stillness by isolating an overhead source of light, so as to catch the subject as if they were occupying a museum display.

Where Mills' figures differ from museum oddities, however, is in their vibrancy. The voiceovers frame the characters in the past, yet while on screen they are thrillingly alive, even at their most ordinary. 20th Century Women can be brittle and caustic, but there is an underlying warmth at the core that practically floods the screen. And yet, in that tremendous warmth also lies clear-cut honesty. Mills and his characters don't sidestep the painful realities of life, whether it's those experienced by a parent or a child. But in that honesty, the film finds its transcendent moments. Those slices of life can be as significant as addressing a childhood trauma, or simply flailing your arms as you try to dance along the music around you. 


Grade: A-

Review: "Jackie"

Director: Pablo Larrain
Runtime: 99 minutes

Though it features only the briefest moments of blood and gore, there is something so deeply immersive and unsettling about Jackie that made me queasy. The lives, legacies, and tragedies of the Kennedy clan have been in the public consciousness for decades. Movies, miniseries, plays, novels, and conspiracy theories about the Kennedys have congealed into their own industry, and that industry has taken hold as its own sub-genre of American culture (Kennedy Kitsch? Kennedy Camp?). Yet none have pierced through shield of the Kennedy mythos quite like director Pablo Larrain. A native of Chile, Mr. Larrain's English language debut, despite centering on American royalty, feels as fresh and urgent as his film's directly tied to his homeland's socio-political conscious.

Even though Jackie opens with a familiar framing device (the subject is being interviewed, with length flashbacks filling in the gaps), Larrain is quick to distance himself from decades' worth of mythologizing and hagiography. Before Jackie O (Natalie Portman, astounding) even appears on screen, the viewer is jolted by the otherworldly strains of the score. There are no patriotic tunes of either the upbeat or mournful variety. Instead, avant garde composer Mica Levi (who also wrote the haunting music for Under the Skin) floods the soundscape with a swirl of alien notes and tones. The score, which seeps out like a frozen, enveloping embrace, is disorienting to brilliant effect. 

The Kennedy brothers (Jack is Caspar Phillipson, Bobby is Peter Sarsgaard) make their appearances throughout Jackie, but Larrain and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim keep the focus on the titular First Lady of Camelot. With whole life thrown into chaos, Jackie finds herself being unravelled at all angles, and Levi's music does an overwhelmingly powerful job of communicating her emotional discord. There are no elaborate swooping camera moves in Jackie, but Levi's music and Stephane Fontaine's images mix like vodka and Xanax. It's off-putting, then hypnotic, and climaxes with a sense of dissociation that leaves your nerves exhausted, your mind numb, and your innards hollow and tumultuous.

Jackie sustains its limited premise through its craftsmanship, but it's thanks to Portman that it transcends. It's a brilliant example that proves finding the right actor to play a historical figure goes beyond (and can even exclude) exact likeness. Portman's features have some glaring differences, and there appears to have been no use of padding or prosthetics to bridge the gap between artist and subject. Yet the instant those rounded words glide out of Portman's mouth, all doubt vanishes: it's her. 

Of course, vocal inflections and the right hair do not a rounded performance make, and Portman and Larrain are well aware of this. Oppenheim's screenplay, aided by Sebastian Sepulveda's editing, positions the various flashbacks like an orchestra of mirrors. They reflect and refract, with Portman functioning as the story's anchor more so than the scenes involving the journalist (Billy Crudup). Even if everything had been handled with an emphasis on linearity, it would do nothing to diminish Portman's work, which takes Jackie O through so much complex emotional territory and distills it into a character both deeply empathetic and not quite of this world (often at the same time). In short, it makes Portman's Oscar-winning performance in Black Swan look like amateur hour. 

The driving thesis of Jackie, which is pointed out early on, concerns reality's relationship with historical narratives and fairy tales. Portman, Larrain, and Oppenheim repeat the idea a few times (perhaps one too-many), but consistently find new ways to play it out in scenarios that feel possible and plausible, even if some liberties are taken in the name of drama. Did Jackie O ever try on a bunch of her clothes, sashay through the White House in a drug-and-booze addled stupor with the soundtrack to Camelot blasting out of the record player? I'm perfectly content never knowing the answer. Reality and history make strange bedfellows, and that discomfort lies at the heart of what makes Jackie sing so beautifully as a film. Larrain, whose dramas sometimes squander great set-ups on drawn-out, overwrought execution, could not have been a more inspired choice. 

Larrain's perspective is a thrilling compliment to the American iconography on display, and he guides Jackie's journey with masterful control of timing and tone (Oppenheim's script includes some welcome moments of mordant and mournful wit). Few scenes this year will merge great writing, acting, and directing the way Jackie does when the First Lady appears to break the news of JFK's death to her children. It is mesmerizing, stomach-churning, white-knuckle intense, and ultimately shattering. Larrain's guiding hand, Portman's face, and Oppenheim's words (and silences) take two horrendous moments (one personal, one political) and blow them up to operatic proportions: The President is dead...My husband is dead...My husband the President is dead. Those unspoken statements hang there through all of Jackie, and their weight only increases with time. When Crudup's journalist asks Jackie if she has any advice, she replies, "Don't marry the President." After spending just over 90 minutes in Jackie's head, you'll understand why.

Grade: A

Trailer: "To Rome with Love"

Though not set for release until June 22, Sony has finally rolled out a first look at Woody Allen's follow-up to Midnight in Paris, which became the director's biggest financial success and earned him another writing Oscar. Allen's track record seems to go one hit, then one or two misses, which doesn't bode well for To Rome with Love, though that's hardly concrete evidence to go on. I'd love for Allen's love letter to Italy, which features three separate narratives, to be his second successive success for any number of reasons. First, it's the first time in a while that Allen has appeared on screen in addition to writing and directing. Second, the cast is wonderful, and the three narratives should keep things lively. Allen has quite the cast assembled (as per usual), and the material here looks both engaging and funny (Judy Davis' jab at Allen's IQ and his line about the family of his daughter's boyfriend are gold). I don't like that so much of the Baldwin-Eisenberg-Page-Gerwig segment is spoiled while the other two segments reveal less, but hopefully there are still some surprises left over. Surprise worked well for Midnight in Paris, which teased none of its time travel in the trailer, so here's hoping there's something else to the triptych of stories than the obvious.


Trailer Grade: B