FAYE: THE MANY LIVES OF FAYE DUNAWAY*****

Documentarian Laurent Bouzereau has made a name for himself as the chronicler of Steven Spielberg's oeuvre. He shifts focus here with an impeccably produced and revelatory full-length documentary slash interview with cinema icon Faye Dunaway.  The resulting film is sympathetic but unsparing, matching the raw honesty of Faye herself, but echoing the evident love and admiration of her son.

We begin with all the disparaging cliches. Faye is difficult, volatile, and the woman Betty Davis said she couldn't be paid enough to work with again. Bouzereau shows Faye's self-acknowledged perfection early on in how she holds up filming to adjust every aspect of her posture, make-up and hair.  Faye says she got her perfectionism from her mother who was trapped in a marriage with an alcoholic serviceman, and disciplined her daughter into academic success. Dunaway does not regret this and credits her mother for her work ethic and perfectionism. 

We see Faye in her pomp - equally beautiful and talented - searing our collective imaginations in BONNIE & CLYDE, CHINATOWN and NETWORK. We then see Faye's sudden reversal of fortune with her portrayal of Joan Crawford in MOMMIE DEAREST. The film is now seen as a camp classic but its initial failure still clearly stings. Dunaway blames the director for not telling her to modulate her performance. We then enter the 1980s - roles in minor films - and a reinvention as a Broadway actress. But the great era is over.

As the interview unfurls we realise that Faye may have been difficult in the same way that Streisand was difficult - because she was smart and had opinions - but there was something deeper and darker going on too.  Dunaway was/ is actually bipolar and those hair-trigger (literally) mood swings can be attributed to undiagnosed mental illness. And then, in the 1980s, to alcoholism that was partly hereditary and partly self-medication before her son got her properly treated for both.

All this leaves us with a nuanced and profoundly compassionate picture of a woman who was strong, smart, talented but also vulnerable and struggling to survive. There is so much to Faye's story beyond the damning headlines - and so much to consider about how people who do not conform to Hollywood's pressures and expectations are depicted in the media.  

FAYE has a running time of 91 minutes and is available to stream.

HEAVEN'S GATE - AN APPRECIATION

Cimino's breathtaking Heaven's Gate: cinema as stunning landscape painting

This review is available as a podcast below or by subscribing to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

True story.  In 1892, the rich cattle-ranchers of Wyoming declared war on the newest influx of poor immigrants for old Europe. A few of these famished immigrants were rustling, to be sure, but nothing to justify the wholesale butchering of men on trumped up charges of anarchy and theft.  What makes it worse is that the stockmen apparently had the tacit, and then the explicit support of the US government, even though no actual warrants were produced in advance of the action. The result is the Johnson County War - although massacre would be a closer description.

Fast forward to the 1970s, and New Hollywood director Michael Cimino, flush from the success of THE DEER HUNTER, used that leverage to get United Artists to let him make his passion project, originally titled The Johnson County War, but known to us as HEAVEN'S GATE.  

That movie comes to us today freighted with notoriety and tales of hubris, excess and abuse.  Cimino was, like most of his auteur counterparts, so bloated with success and flush with cash, that his projects became journeys into addiction and ego-maniacal tyranny. It could have been RAGING BULL or APOCALYPSE NOW that sunk a studio, and pulled the curtain down on that Golden Age - both of those pictures were helmed by drug-addled geniuses who went massively over-budget, and were tortured in editing - but it happened to HEAVEN'S GATE.  And so offensive was Cimino's arrogance and so lurid the tales of sets rebuilt on a whim, millions of feet of stock printed, actors exhausted after take after take, that the press were rabid before they even saw a frame of the finished picture.

Cimino's went into the editing suite with 220 hours of footage, that had cost the studio $44m, on an initial budget nearer $10m.  His initial cut was 325 minutes long, and deemed unreleasable.  He cut it down to 219 minutes and it played New York in November 1980 and bombed.  He eventually cut it down even more to 149 minutes, which played in 1981.  It bombed again. Ebert called it the worst movie he'd seen.  It won Razzies rather than Oscars. It became an industry joke, except with dire consequences, as United Artists effectively went bust and got sold off the back of it.  Studios started making heavily produced action flicks rather than risky visionary films.  And it was all Cimino's fault.  He never made another movie of any note or scale or vision.

Amid all the hype and the hoopla - the moral superiority and told-you-sos - the reality is that HEAVEN'S GATE is, to my mind, one of the greatest films ever made.  And now, with the painstaking restoration and recompilation of a 216 minute cut*, supervised by Michael Cimino, we can all see why, projected on the big screen, where this movie belongs.  It is, to my mind, visually stunning; beautifully acted; incredibly accomplished in its use of music; and deeply politically relevant today.  There are so many scenes that I remember vividly - so many one-liners that I can always recall - and watching it anew this week - so much that is relevant in our post-global financial crisis world. 

What follows here is less of a review than a long-form critical appreciation, full of spoilers. 

Kris Kristofferson as the world-weary Jim Averill.

The movie opens with a PROLOGUE set in Harvard in 1870 as two friends, Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson) and Billy Irvine (John Hurt) are graduating.  They are ebullient, triumphant, the kings of summer. The college priest (an ageing Joseph Cotton) lectures them on their obligation to civilise the uncivilised, but Billy, already a jovial drunkard and master wordsmith, warns them that change is impossible in his fateful, but little understood, valedictory address. But even as the boys dance with their sweethearts to the Blue Danube on the college lawns, violence breaks in. There's some kind of kerfuffle - town vs gown perhaps? - and Billy is bleeding.  He realises that this is the happiest they will ever be. It's all over.  They will never again be this full of hope and life and promise.  

I found this segment especially poignant, not least because the scenes, though claiming to be in Harvard, were filmed at my alma mater, and the waltz scene was so redolent of those drunken high summer balls.  But despite that personal connection, it's surely impossible not to be swept up in that opening triumphant march, the Battle Hymn of the Republic sweeping our lads into their elite ceremony, the gilded hall pullulating with pretty girls. And as we transition to the lawns for the extended waltz scene, the fluidity of Cimino and DP Vilmos Zsigmond's camera allow that energy and vitality to lift us up and into that moment. 

The FIRST ACT of the movie proper takes place twenty years later, with a quick scene setting up at once the brutal struggle to survive in Johnson County. A poor immigrant is slaughtering a cow that he has stolen, when from behind a white sheet, the shadow of a mercenary comes up and shoots him cold dead.  It's a brutal and stunning expressionist shot that defines so much of what is to come.  We then move into St Louis for the remainder of this act, as a now grizzled Averill learns of the war that the stockmen have declared on the immigrants.  

As his train rolls into town we are faced with the awful dichotomy of his empty first class carriage, and the quite literally huddled masses on top of it. The sound of the train, the people, the horses, the traffic is so loud that we can barely hear the dialogue.  This isn't a mistake.  Cimino is making a point about the chaos, industry and anarchy of a frontier boom-town, and of the savage brutality of a world where a starving child is pitied by a working class train-steward but nobody else.  His recreation of that world is immersive and worth every production decision to build and rebuild.  I've never before felt the industrial machine so tangibly - and the steam engine whipping up dust and cloud, is like something out of Whistler. 

Isabelle Huppert as Ella and Kris Kristofferson as Averill

As soon as Averill makes his way from the station to the exclusive club where the stockmen are hatching their plot, the hushed luxurious silence is stark and obvious.  Only the rich have the luxury of peace in which to think.  Averill is told the full details of the 125 man Death List by his old friend Billy Irvine - now so drunk he barely has the courage to stand against the plan - the most tragic post-college drunk since Sebastian Flyte.

As we move into the second hour of the film, ACT TWO takes us to Johnson County, and into the crazy, down and dirty world of John Bridges (Jeff Bridges) emporium of cock-fighting, drinking, gambling and, somewhat improbably, roller-skating!  Averill tries to warn everyone of the coming war, but no-one seems to take action because they have too much tied up in the town, and perhaps because it seems so fantastical a threat.  The interiors are dark, crowded, richly decorated and drip with authenticity.  Cimino shows immigrants speaking their own dialects and doesn't translate.  We feel for the first time what it must have been to be in settler country.  In the words of John Bridges: "It's getting dangerous to be poor in this country." Averill replies: "It always was."

One of the most exhilarating scenes - the roller-dance at Heaven's Gate

We also meet Ella (Isabelle Huppert), the brothel madam with whom Averill is having a relationship.  He gives her a grand horse and carriage and her exuberant ride into town is filmed with wild POV shots that communicate the danger and exhilaration of the ride. That joyful energy carries over into a scene that mirrors the formal dancing of the college lawn waltz - the roller-skating dance at the rink known as "Heaven's Gate." I've never seen a better use of music in film to communicate a sense of community, time, history and motivation.  As for the production design - just the posters on the walls of Heaven's Gate should've won this picture an Oscar. 

This takes us into the central emotional triangle of the film.  Ella loves Averill and he wants her to leave, but won't leave with her. By contrast, the mercenary Nate Chamption (Christopher Walken) will keep Ella safe if she marries him.  She needs to be kept safe because she's been accepting the pilfered cattle as payment, incurring the stock association's ire. Behaviour that might appear coquettish in another comes across as genuine love of both men. It's a subtle and modern portrayal that few other films have managed to convey.  As for Averill, it's not clear if he really loves Ella.  When he's deposited, drunk, back in his digs by Nate, we see that he still has a framed picture of his college sweetheart.  

And while we're here, let's stop a minute to appreciate that amazing set of the rooming-house, full to the brim with poor immigrants - a set that extends in depth and height, to hammocks slung across the narrow corridor, bodies everywhere, claustrophobic and stifling. The beautifully, deliberately framed visuals continue.  We see a team of old women, bundled in rags, pulling a plough-share until they fall from fatigue.  A drunken man atop a horse, backlit in deep blue against the night sky.  And finally, one of the most powerful scenes in the film, entirely without dialogue: Nate pulls out a chair for Ella at his table, inviting her to marry him silently - will she sit down?

The war begins - expressionistic framing and choice of camera angle.

ACT THREE sees the war start, and opens the third hour of the film. Fatefully, it's the poor good-hearted train-steward who's the first to be killed in a shot whose power is enhanced by the camera angles and colour contrast - red blood against lush green grass. This truly is paradise turned to hell. Averill reads out the Death List to the gathered immigrants in Heaven's Gate. It's basically the whole town. The townsfolk bemoan the fact that they have been disenfranchised - that the rules of the game are rigged for the rich - and that it has always ever been thus.  "Your hopes are exaggerated. In the end they got it all anyway."  We move to the brothel where Ella is gang-raped - a scene that is shot sensitively despite Cimino's easy use of full frontal nudity earlier. Averill comes to her rescue, but even then can't offer her a way out - because he won't marry her, and she won't leave otherwise. It all seems utterly hopeless.

There is a futility and nihilism and rage that seems to reflect our own contemporary angst in movements such as Occupy and the Tea Party, at opposite ends of the spectrum.  Somehow the system seems rigged against the poor, and even the rich are resorting to extra-judicial measures to protect their wealth.  The immigrants see themselves as the real contributors to society - wanting to improve and work the land, and make something of Wyoming. They characterise the stockmen as "Eastern speculators" just creaming off profit but holding Wyoming back as just a cow pasture.  The debate seems redolent of our current opposition between the nostalgia for an economy that made "things" rather than abstract and complex derivatives.  

The mercenaries ride into town.

As we move into the third hour of the film, we enter ACT FOUR, which is, basically, the massacre. Poor Nate Champion, who had discovered something like a conscious and nobility after Ella's rape, turns on his masters and is smoked out of his cottage in turn and shot down in a scene that has visual punch equivalent to the final scene of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID. Ebert says he thinks it's absurd that he'd write a final not to Ella in that moment, but I felt it was utterly credible and psychologically correct.  Moreover, there was something heartbreaking of seeing his precious walls - wallpapered in newspaper adverts - go up in smoke. So much for the Harvard Reverend's attempts to civilise the uncivilised. 

Meanwhile, the townsfolk have been butchered, and those that remain hole up overnight.  Averill prolongs their pain with some Roman tactics, but it's all shut down when the US army intervenes, on the side of the stockmen.  Somebody washes his hands of it, saying "it's not me that's doing it to you, it's the rules."  Once again, that modern cynicism is staggering - it's not a particular person that's evil - not even Sam Waterston's swaggering elitist Carron - but the impersonal, arrogant, immovable "rules". It's like some kind of nightmarish Leonard Cohen song: "everybody knows that the dice are loaded."  Averill turns his back on the men, he's already resigned as marshall, and for one forlorn moment we think he might leave with Ella, in bridal white, but that's obviously absurd.  As absurd as the idea that poor drunkard-savant Billy, having declared that "all flesh is dust" would survive the cross-fire.  This isn't a place for romance or romantics.

So, from the glorious lawns of Harvard, the Blue Danube now plays over the dusty, wagon strewn field where the immigrants have been butchered and a widow blows her brains out.  If Averill survives to the EPILOGUE, three hours and twenty minutes into the film, he's living a kind of death too.  Dressed like a dandy on a yacht with this college sweet-heart, now aged and dessicated. He's suffocating under chintz and roses.   

HEAVEN'S GATE closes with most of the characters we loved butchered, Averill trapped, the rules of the game unchanged, in fact, validated by the highest authorities.  Nate Champion's triumphant "fuck you" achieved nothing, neither did Averill's pleas and idealism.  Even Billy's descent into alcoholism couldn't save him. And third generation asshole Carron has probably spawned another three generations of state governors.  If the message of EASY RIDER was "we blew it", the message of HEAVEN'S GATE is that we were never in a position to blow it - the game was blown before we even got here. In it's all pervading disenfranchisement and nihilism, it speaks eloquently to our times and in visual and musical poetry that matches anything in cinema history.

HEAVEN'S GATE was released in 1980. The digitally restored 216 minute cut opens on 2nd August at BFI Southbank and selected cinemas nationwide. *It's basically the same as the original 219 minute cut except without an intermission. The original YCM negative has been 2K scanned and recombined and then restored under Cimino's direct supervision. This cut has been rated 15 in the UK for strong violence, sexual violence, sexualised nudity and language.  One scene of unsimulated animal cruelty was cut.  It is rated R in the USA. 

iPad Round-Up 5 - IMMORTALS

Tarsem Singh's last film, the visually stunning, whimsical, deeply emotionally affecting THE FALL, is one of my favourite films of the past decade. In my mind's eye I can see vivid imagery - breathtakingly framed action sequences, wondrous costumes and locations - but I can also feel how heartbroken I was in a pivotal scene where a sweet little girl is bertrayed by the injured man she is trying to help.  It's a movie that has so much heart - such a simple story, when all is said and done - that it compensates for the distancing effect of the highly-stylised visuals and the baroque story-telling style.

Tragically, IMMORTALS is a movie in which there is style, too much style, too many artfully staged, framed and HD-colour-timed visuals, and too little narrative or emotional clarity.  The resulting film is dull (literally - not sure what was up with my iPad download but it was so dark in places I could barely see the action) and then simply unwatchable.  In theory, the movie is about the Greek myth of Perseus, the Clash of the Titans, and the Minotaur.  I studied these myths in school in depth.  But even I didn't have a clue what was happening, or care why.  The actors do the best they can, I suppose, but they're swamped by the visual effects and no-one comes out of it with any credit.  I also suspect that Mickey Rourke, as Hyperion, was simply mis-cast.

Avoid at all costs.  

IMMORTALS was released in November 2011. It is available to rent and own.

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - THE EXPENDABLES

As a massive fan of eighties action flicks - everything from Arnie classics like RED HEAT and PREDATOR - to all those Sly Stallone ROCKY flicks - I was massively looking forward to Sly Stallone's nostalgia-fest, THE EXPENDABLES. Any movie features Sly, Dolph, Arnie, Mickey Rourke et al was going to be okay with me. It was a bit disappointing they couldn't get Jean-Claude van Damme too but hey, it was a dream cast-list of muscle-bound meat-heads plus their younger heir apparent, Jason Statham. The plot also sounded reassuring hackneyed - a bunch of mercenaries are hired by the CIA to go depose a Latin American dictator. Simple as. Knife fights, gun fights, fist fights, blowing shit up, liberating locals and presumably returning home to some grateful hot totty.

What did we get? Half an hour of sheer nostalgia and gratitude on the part of this viewer. Every time I saw another aged crony on the screen I felt warm and fuzzy. But after the initial thrill had passed, I was just plain bored. Because THE EXPENDABLES is basically a very very mediocre film. Sure, all the explosions and stunts are there, but there are no stakes. The dialogue is crappy and I really didn't care about any of it. What writer-director Sly Stallone failed to realise was that in those 1980s classics, sure there was ridonkulousness, but there was also heart. We cared about Rocky and Adrian. Rambo was actually a pretty deep film about psychological scarring and alienation. Movies like TERMINATOR and RUNNING MAN had proper political and sci-fi credentials. And even when the movies were purely stupid - PREDATOR springs to mind - they had the good sense to amp everything up to R-rated craziness. And while THE EXPENDABLES had some of the violence, and I say this with all respect to the feminist cause, where were the boobs?

Sad, but true, THE EXPENDABLES was just to bland and safe and polished.

THE EXPENDABLES opened in August/September 2010 and is now available to rent and buy.

London Film Festival Day 12 - THE WRESTLER (Surprise film)

THE WRESTLER is one of those films that makes you re-assess your preconceptions about a certain actor or director. After the bloated disaster of THE FOUNTAIN I was wondering if Darren Aronofsky would ever produce anything as visceral and devestating as REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. And as for Mickey Rourke - well his career was a joke, wasn't it? And yet here we are with THE WRESTLER - a movie that eschews all the technical tricks and pretentious philosophical musings of Aronofsky's earlier work to give as a restrained, emotionally rich character study. And here we have a central performance from Rourke that's just astounding and definitely Oscar-worthy, channelling all his own experience of a fall from fame into a nuanced and endearing performance. Indeed, THE WRESTLER is up there with IL DIVO and HUNGER as the best movie of the festival so far.

It's a simple story, well told. THE WRESTLER opens with a wry sub-title "twenty years later". Rourke plays a wrestler called "The Ram" who was famous in the 80s but now ekes out a living playing local exhibition matches for cash-in-hand. He lives in a trailor - his daughter doesn't want to know him - his only emotional engagement is with a stripper - his body is a beaten-up mess. But despite all this, The Ram remains a surprisingly upbeat, stand-up guy. He's a pleasure to spend time with. He throws himself into life - even a shitty job at a supermarket deli counter - with gusto. And thanks to a brilliant performance from Rourke, we really want him to turn around his relationship with his daughter and to have a proper relationship with the stripper.

The tragedy is that The Ram is now so bent out of shape that to fight will kill him. But what else can he do? In real life, he's called "Robin", he works a crap job, and he has to struggle for respect. In the ring, to the fans, he's a god. This is the secret of his relationship with the stripper. In the club, she's Cassidy. But outside of the club, she's Pam - a hard-working mum with a kid. For a moment, it looks like they'll be able to help each other, but in the final analysis, the wrestler can't switch his identity so late in life. Really, this movie has the perfect title - it's how The Ram identifies himself and who are we to judge him for sticking to that?

THE WRESTLER played Venice, where it won The Golden Lion, Toronto and London 2008. It opens in the US on December 31st, in Australia on January 15th and in Germany on February 26th.

STORMBREAKER - camper than a row of soldiers

Let me say right at the start that this new James Bond for teens is enormous fun. It rips along at a fast pace with low-budget action sequences and iconic images of Blighty and you'd struggle to have an actively bad time. The big question is how seriously are we meant to take it? As someone who has never read the kids books by Anthony Horowitz, upon which this movie is based, my only clue was the trailer. This made the film out to be a straight-faced spy thiller for teens. The hero, Alex Rider is a fourteen year-old kid, whose uncle was a British spy. Upon the death of his uncle, Alex is recruited by MI6, fitted out with the requisite gadgets and sent off to stop an Evil Megalomaniac from killing lots of people. So far, so straight.

The weird thing is that while half the cast (notably Alex Pettyfer as Alex Rider) and, from what I can tell, the script-writer, seem to be playing it straight, all the British character actors are camper than a row of soldiers. They play the movie as some sort of sub-Austin Powers James Bond spoof but without the overt humour. Bill Nighy is brilliant (again) as the M figure - playing it like a constipated civil servant with more tics than an impala. Sophie Okenodo is more straight-laced than Vanessa Kensington. Micky Rourke looks insane with all that make-up as the baddie, and he even has a shrieking Nazi Rosa Klebb style side-kick played by Missi Pyle.

Like I said, this is no bad thing. It just adds to the whole Doctor Who made-on-a-shoestring-budget vibe that we Brits know and love. Sort of like Benny Hill does Bond but for kids. It's about as classy as watching 'Allo 'Allo. I just wonder what the Yanks will make of it.

STORMBREAKER is on general release in the UK. It opens in Hong Kong and Israel on August 10th 2006, the US on August 18th, Iceland on September 14th, Australia on September 21st and Italy on September 22nd. It hits the Netherlands on October 12th, Finland and Sweden on October 13th, Belgium and France on October 25th.

DOMINO - like a ferret on crystal meth

DOMINO is a failure of a movie. Shot and edited like a ferret on crystal myth, this movie is the most likely to cause motion sickness since RAG TALE. With so many freeze-frames, jump cuts, colour-saturated action sequences, it takes a real effort to actually concentrate on what is actually going on. Perhaps this is the intention of the director, because the plot is poor. Do not be fooled by the fact that the central concept is fascinating or that the screenplay was penned by Richard Kelley, the wuenderkind who wrote and directed DONNIE DARKO. Donnie Darko was a great flick but let's tell it like it is: Kelly screwed up a perfectly fascinating tale. For DOMINO is a very loose biopic of a woman called Domino Harvey. The daughter of a famous actor and a supermodel, Domino reacted against the stuffy British establishment and the Beverly Hills crowd. She got thrown out of a bunch of boarding schools and eventually became a bounty hunter in South L.A. Now, that's a story, and Tony Scott, director of TOP GUN, TRUE ROMANCE and SPY GAME, thought so too.

Here's the glitch. Kelly or Scott or whoever had the brainwave of overlaying Domino's story with a heist movie. Worse, a heist plot that is difficult to believe, so reliant is it on absurd coincidences. Then, just to add to the general chaos obscuring the central story, they added a whole bunch of fascinating but totally out-of-place discourse on pop-culture. There are lots of fun critiques of reality TV, for instance, but the satire is blunt and moves away from the point.

All of which makes DOMINO a rather uninvolving and annoying viewing experience. Who knew? A Christopher Walken film I would happily not see again.

DOMINO is on release in the US and UK. It goes on release in France on November 23rd 2005 and in Austria and Germany on December 29th.