Part 85: 1997
MOVIES:
Fargo (hidden gem)
Jerry Maguire
The English Patient (winner)
Shine
Secrets & Lies
Fargo
Director: Joel Coen
Starring: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell, Peter Stormare, Kristin Rudrud, Tony Denman, Steve Reevis, Larry Brandenburg, John Carroll Lynch, Steve Park, Bruce Bohne, Larissa Kokernot, David S. Lomax, Melissa Peterman, J. Todd Anderson, Michelle Suzanne LeDoux, Bain Boehlke, Warren Keith, James Gaulke, Jose Feliciano, Cliff Rakerd, Gary Houston, Steve Edelman, Sally Wingert
Oscar Wins: Best Actress (Frances McDormand), Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
Other Nominations: Best Supporting Actor (William H. Macy), Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Picture
On my list of Desert Island movies, Fargo is always nestled somewhere in the top three, usually floating between Rushmore and Beetlejuice. Everything about this movie is picture perfect, down to those syrupy sweet Minnesota accents. To describe it is a challenge – it’s funny, it’s violent, it’s sweet, and it’s sad. There’s actually a scene in the film where one character describes another as “funny looking” without being able to say why – trying to describe why this film is so amazing raises the same difficulty.
Fargo begins with a song reminiscent of a folk tale, haunting and minor. As the camera opens on a desolate, white snowscape, we can’t help but feel we’re somewhere else, somewhere foreign, somewhere beyond. We follow a car down a remote road to a bar in Fargo, North Dakota, where Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), a shady car salesman, is lining up a business deal with two local thugs - Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare). In what will become the first of many dominos to fall, Lundegaard’s plan involves these two morons kidnapping his wife (Kristin Rudrud) so his wealthy father-in-law, Wade (Harve Presnell), will be forced to pay her ransom. Lundegaard will split the random pay with the ex-cons, his wife will go free, and Lundegaard will have the money he needs to save him from bankruptcy. What could go wrong?
Well, as it turns out, everything. Everything can go wrong. To begin with, Showalter – an “in and out” sort of guy – is willing to follow the rules and get his payout. However, he hooked his wagon to the bleach blonde psycho, Grimsrud, who only loves two things: violence and pancakes. When the simple kidnapping goes awry, the “no rough stuff” deal takes a grim turn of events and leaves a pile of bodies in its wake.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Brainerd, Minnesota, a 3 a.m. phone call wakes up a very pregnant Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand). Marge Gunderson is one of a handful of characters whose name remains in our memories – like Travis Bickle, Hannibal Lecter, and Jack Sparrow – characters who are completely, unapologetically, themselves…so much so that their movies depend on who they are.
Marge is the police chief in Brainerd. She’s the very image of Midwest decency and modesty – friendly almost to a fault. She’s also a natural police officer with great intuition and procedural sense, entirely unfazed by the ugliness and violence of the case she’s been assigned solve. And even as the blood continues to spill and the snow continues to fall, Marge can’t help but comment on the beauty of it all. “There’s more to life than a little money,” she says. Most of the characters in Fargo wouldn’t have a clue what she means.
While the plot of Fargo is certainly engaging, the reason this film is so well-loved (by me, anyway!) is the casting. How William H. Macy lost his Oscar nomination to Cuba Gooding, Jr. will never, EVER, make sense to me. As Jerry Lundegaard, Macy’s performance is incredible. His role, which could easily have fallen into a cliché (lying car salesman), instead becomes a sharp portrait of a man motivated by obligation, falling deeper and deeper into a world he knows nothing about. He’s inarticulate, rude, and self-absorbed, giving himself (and his ability to lie) WAY too much credit. You almost want to feel sorry for the guy, but never does he do anything to earn that sympathy.
And yet, he’s our ride through Fargo. That’s the nasty trap. Even when we FINALLY meet Marge a good portion into the film, we can’t switch over to her point of view. We can admire Marge. We can want to be Marge. We can idolize her perfect marriage with Norm “Son-of-a-Gunderson” (John Carroll Lynch), but – like Showalter and Grimsrud and Wade – we’re stuck with lonely, pathetic, Jerry…and it’s a testament to William H. Macy’s brilliant performance that we can both hate and pity him at the same time.
But as wonderful as William H. Macy and Frances McDormand are in Fargo, no character captures the screen quite like the snow. In most fables, snow is associated with virginal innocence, but the snow in Fargo is drenched with guilt. It reveals incriminating footprints…it hides evidence of a crime. And, as anyone will tell you who’s driven through it, it often blinds us to what’s coming, usually until it’s too late.
In a film of great “Midwesternisms”, the most pivotal scene happens in one of the most realistic scenarios. A man is shoveling his driveway, bundled up from head to toe, and turns to another man and says, “Looks like she’s gonna turn cold tomorrow.” And, while this particular snow-covered day isn’t exactly warm, he knows it could always get worse. It’s funny in that Midwestern way – and also a little bit sobering – because it could get worse. And that’s the moral here. Bad things happen everywhere – even in the Midwest. But small-town life still has value. Those daily interactions in our driveways still have worth. If nothing else, they allow us to find even a little bit of beauty in the every day.
Jerry Maguire
Director: Cameron Crowe
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Renee Zellweger, Kelly Preston, Jerry O'Connell, Jay Mohr, Bonnie Hunt, Regina King, Jonathan Lipnicki, Todd Louiso, Jeremy Suarez, Jared Jussim, Jann Wenner, Ali Wentworth, Aries Spears, Kelly Coffield, Winnie Holzman, Hyden Walch, Glenn Frey, Donal Logue, Tom Gallop, Angela Goethals, Rick Johnson, Jerry Cantrell, Toby Huss, Drake Bell, Christine Cavanaugh, Eric Stoltz, Brent Barry, Theo Greenly, Jerry Ziesmer, Anthony Natale, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Lucy Liu, Justina Vail Evans, Samantha Smith, Ivana Milicevic, Lisa Stahl, Emily Procter, Stacey Williams, Lisa Ann Hadley, Alison Armitage, Rebecca Rigg, Roy Firestone, Al Michaels, Dan Dierdorf, Frank Gifford, Mel Kiper, Jr., Jeffrey Lurie, Drew Rosenhaus, Rich Kotite, Tim McDonald, Mike Tirico, Wayne Fontes, Mike White, Johnnie Morton, Rick Mirer, Drew Bledsoe, Rob Moore, Ki-Jana Carter, Herman Moore, Art Monk, Troy Aikman, Katarina Witt, Dean Biasucci, Warren Moon, Kerry Collins, Erica Sorgi, Dallas Malloy, Jim Irsay
Oscar Wins: Best Supporting Actor (Cuba Gooding, Jr.)
Other Nominations: Best Actor (Tom Cruise), Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Best Film Editing, Best Picture
“If you don’t walk out of Jerry Maguire with a goofy grin the size of Alaska plastered across your face,” said one critic, “check your pulse – you’re probably dead.”
Well…
The amount of people who said this movie made them cry is frankly insane. Did we watch the same film? THIS one? THIS one made you cry? Yeah, tears of boredom, maybe. This movie did not have me at hello…or goodbye…or really at any time. By the time Cuba Gooding, Jr. was screaming “Show me the money!”, I was screaming “Show me the ending!” instead.
Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is a high-powered, egotistical sports agent who is fed up with his job where he works to make rich athletes even richer. He has so many clients that he can’t really care about any of them and spends most of his time jogging from one airplane to another, racking up frequent flyer miles like his status depends on it (because it probably does).
One night he has a crisis of conscience and pens a long mission statement titled “The Things We Think and Do Not Say: The Future of Our Business”. The essay attacks the sports agency business, advocating for a more humane approach. Powered by self-assurance and egotism, he distributes a copy to everyone in his office and is actually surprised when he gets fired. Almost all of his clients drop him and he’s left with nothing but the goldfish he stole from the company office.
But Jerry has a plan – he’ll just start his own company! In his best Ari Gold impression, he asks if anyone in the office will join him…crickets. Eventually, a naïve, young, single mother named Dorothy (Renee Zellweger) stands up and agrees to follow him. It doesn’t matter that she has a kid at home who relies on her for food and clothing…she’s so moved by Jerry’s speech and long-winded manifesto that she just forgets about all of that to follow this hot stud on this hairbrained adventure.
As word spreads, more and more clients drop Jerry for a more reliable manager. The only one left is Arizona Cardinals wide receiver, Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), who falls for Jerry’s promises that he can make him loads of money.
Meanwhile, Jerry falls in love with Dorothy’s kid, Ray (Jonathan Lipnicki), which she takes to mean he’s fallen in love with her. They eventually get married, break up, then get back together again when Jerry makes an impassioned speech to Dorothy about how she completes him – even though they have, like, no chemistry. Dorothy lacks the self-confidence to tell him to bugger off, so she tells him he had her at hello – meaning he didn’t even really have to apologize, even though he treated her like actual garbage. Classic.
For a movie hell-bent on condemning the culture of insincerity, cynicism, and shallowness, it spends an awful lot of time trying to make us feel bad for the relentlessly shallow, insincere Maguire. Nothing this man does redeems him at all. Even his final plea to Dorothy seems contrived because he never really expressed love for her throughout the entire 140-minute runtime. Their relationship seems to be based more on mutual desperation than actual love and by the time they reconnect, you almost feel sorry for the girl because she thinks this is the best she can do.
Jerry Maguire may seem like one of those movies that’s designed to serve a female audience under the cloak of a brawny sports movie, but its understanding of women is entirely masculine. Even the script, which tries to make well-meaning nods to gender equality and racial prejudice, falls flat. After retaining his one client (who happens to be Black), Maguire exclaims he’s “Mr. Black People!” – no one is more fitting to represent a Black athlete. Yet the film takes the opposite approach. As Rod Tidwell, Cuba Gooding, Jr. is nothing if not an African American caricature. His character is safe, overplayed, and one-dimensional. How he won the Oscar over William H. Macy for Fargo will never make sense to me, but here we are.
In all honesty, I really wanted to like Jerry Maguire. I was hoping this was the one that would live up to the hype, but I just couldn’t get into it. It’ll be interesting to see how this movie holds up over the next few years and if I ever meet a person in real life who feels how I feel about it…at that point, they’ll probably have me at hello, too.
The English Patient
Director: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth, Julian Wadham, Jurgen Prochnow, Kevin Whately, Clive Merrison, Nino Castelnuovo, Hichem Rostom, Peter Ruhring, Torri Higginson, Liisa Repo-Martell
Oscar Wins: Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Binoche), Best Costume Design, Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Music (Original Dramatic Score), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, Best Picture
Other Nominations: Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Actress (Kristin Scott Thomas), Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Elaine Benes may not know how to dance. She may have poor fashion sense, poor taste in men, and she may not abide by the Soup Nazi’s rules…but she was right about one thing:
The English Patient is a stupid movie.
OK, maybe stupid is the wrong word. How about boring? Or long? Or Dull? Or Bland? Honestly, any of those will do. Like most movies for this project, I tried to give this one the benefit of the doubt, but I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe it was just too hard to picture the guy who brought some of the most repulsive villains to life actually fall in love and be a normal person. But, I digress.
The English Patient begins with a pre-war biplane flying above the desert, carrying two passengers in its open cockpits. We will eventually learn who they are, why they’re in the plane, and what fate has in store for them…but it’s a looong journey to get there.
First, we must hop around in time, traveling to and from the present to put this story together. The “present” takes place in Italy, during the last days of World War II. A horribly burned man named Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes) (the ‘English patient’ of the title) has arrived at a local hospital. When he grows too ill to be moved, a nurse named Hana (Juliette Binoche) offers to stay behind to care for him in the ruins of an old monastery. Hana is in love with Kip (Naveen Andrews), a bomb defuser who constantly seems to find himself in trouble. Then they’re all joined by Caravaggio (Willem Defoe), a crazy thief who has no thumbs. If it sounds convoluted and confusing, then good, because it is.
Laszlo’s skin is so badly burned that it looks like tortured leather. His face is ruined, and he can’t quite remember how he got here. Hana cares for him tenderly, perhaps because he reminds her of the other men she loved and lost during the war. Eventually, his memories start to return, and he begins telling Hana about his past, using an old leather-bound book filled with drawings, notes and poems to help draw out his memories.
From here, The English Patient drags through these characters as Laszlo recounts how he ended up with a grilled cheese face. While much of his past is lost to him, other parts are not and they MUST BE TOLD IN GREAT, LONG, EXHAUSTING DETAIL. Like many Best Picture winners, The English Patient assumes all viewers care about in an epic like this is love and war, but it misses the chance to expand on some of these more interesting characters. Caravaggio, for example, pops in and out of the story and always offers hope that SOMETHING will get interesting but, alas, earwax.
Instead, these flashbacks focus mainly on Laszlo, who we learn is not English, but Hungarian. He was in Egypt before the war and worked for the Royal Geographic Society as a pilot who flew over the desert, making maps that could be used for their research.
While in Cairo, he meets a newly married woman named Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas). Her husband Geoffrey (Colin Firth) is a total dud compared to this flying mapmaker…and Laszlo and Katherine begin a passionate, but destructive, love affair. Their entire romance, and a lot more, is pieced together gradually by Laszlo as he dies, ever so slowly, in his bed.
“Boring and beautiful” is certainly a fair epitaph for The English Patient, a film that’s well made but that never picks up the pace. The love story at the center isn’t even the best one in the film. Hana and Kip have way more chemistry than Laszlo and Katharine and share what’s arguably the most memorable and romantic scene in the movie, set in a church and brimming with the innocence of new love. If the main love story had as much feeling in it, I’d probably be writing a very different review. As it is though, The English Patient feels like a stunning visual epic with a hollow center.
Shine
Director: Scott Hicks
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Alex Rafalowicz, Noah Taylor, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Chris Haywood, Gordon Poole, Armin Meuller-Stahl, Nicholas Bell, Danielle Cox, Rebecca Gooden, Marta Kaczmarek, John Cousins, Randall Berger, Googie Withers, John Gielgud, David King, Robert Hands, Marc Warren, Neil Thomson, Joey Kennedy, Beverly Dunn, Lynn Redgrave, Ella Scott Lynch, John Martin, Stephen Sheehan
Oscar Wins: Best Actor (Geoffrey Rush)
Other Nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Armin Mueller-Stahl), Best Music (Original Dramatic Score), Best Film Editing, Best Director, Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Best Picture
Wandering in the rain, a man talks in obsessive chatter, looping back on himself, finding nonsense associations for words and situations. He laughs almost continuously and seems desperately good-natured. When he sits down at a piano at a crowded restaurant, patrons arm themselves for trouble…but then he starts to play. His music floods out of him like a cry of anguish and hope.
Based on the real-life story of Australian pianist David Helfgott, Shine touches on themes as diverse as the nature of genius, the triumph over adversity, and the destructive power of love. It’s a heartbreaking story about passion and art that shows what can happen when the drive for perfection becomes too much for a human to bear.
Shine circles in time, following David Helfgott from childhood (Alex Rafalowicz), through adolescence (Noah Taylor), and into adulthood (Geoffrey Rush). When we first meet him, he’s performing at a school recital. While there, a music teacher (Nicholas Bell) notices his obvious talent and offers to teach him privately.
Eventually, after winning several competitions, David is invited to study music in the United States. His father, Peter (Armin Meuller-Stahl), is determined not to let anyone destroy his family and refuses to let him go.
Soon after, David’s talent begins to languish as his musical progress withers. When he receives a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, an elderly friend (Googie Withers) encourages him to take the offer, regardless of his father’s opinions. Unsurprisingly, Peter is against it, but David decides to go anyway and, in doing so, sunders his already rocky relationship with his father.
While in London, David is taken under the wing of Professor Cecil Parks (John Gielgud), who has found glimpses of genius in his young protegee. David, too, is gaining confidence in himself and asks Professor Parks to teach him how to play Rachmaninov’s infamous Piano Concerto No. 3, accepted as one of the most difficult pieces for even a master pianist, for the upcoming Concerto trials. The professor agrees, guiding David through the theories and mechanics of the piece. By the time the trials arrive, David is well-versed and offers a perfect performance; however, it takes everything out of him, shattering his already fragile mental state. The next time we see him, more than ten years later, he’s a jittery shell of his former self, given to incoherent, babbling monologues. Public piano performances are long behind him…until the film brings us back to the beginning, with David entering that small local restaurant…
It seems pretty simple – pretty run-of-the-mill child protégé stuff…but Shine is slightly more complicated than the likes of My Left Foot, Whiplash, or even The Queen’s Gambit. To fully comprehend David’s story, it’s important to understand his father – the man who essentially created his son, then ultimately destroyed him.
Peter Helfgott was a Polish Jew who settled in Australia after losing most of his family in the Holocaust. As one of his family’s sole survivors, Peter places his family above all else; refusing to let David leave – even if it means bettering his education – because leaving would destroy the family. Peter’s own private demons make his personality erratic and his actions unpredictable, causing David to become unglued. Torn between his father’s demands that he be perfect at the piano and his father’s refusal to let David follow the career that’s building in front of him, David suffers extreme breakdowns that end up having life-long effects on his personality and mental health.
The reason Peter is so obsessed with music stems surprise, surprise from his own messed up childhood. As a boy, Peter wanted to play the violin, but his father disliked music and smashed the instrument Peter bought for himself. Now, Peter is adamant about giving his children the childhood he never had, even if it’s the childhood none of them want.
Shine is about building strength from weakness. Peter’s talks to David about how “only the fit survive” and the belief that “everything will let you down except music” form the creed by which Peter lives. When David attempts to follow this advice, it nearly destroys him. The inspirational aspect of Shine is that David finds a way to fight his way back. He never gives up and, ultimately, triumphs over the demons his father bestowed upon him.
For those who suffer with speech or communication or human-to-human interaction, music offers a method of self-expression. For David, piano playing came naturally. It wasn’t until he could give himself to it that he realized it could also be used as an artform – as a way of saying the things he couldn’t find the words to say. And while Shine is by no means an accurate telling of David Helfgott’s life, it’s still a strong reminder that sometimes there are more effective ways of self-expression than mere speech.
Secrets & Lies
Director: Mike Leigh
Starring: Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Phyllis Logan, Claire Rushbrook, Elizabeth Berrington, Michele Austin, Lee Ross, Lesley Manville, Ron Cook, Emma Amos, Brian Bovell, Trevor Laird, Clare Perkins, Jonny Coyne
Oscar Wins: No wins.
Other Nominations: Best Director, Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Best Picture
Like most films about dysfunctional families, Secrets & Lies should resonate with just about everyone. This isn’t overblown melodrama, but the kind of believable tale that could happen to anyone – a story about simple truths: adoption, infertility, parent-child friction, and the secrets and lies we tell each other, and ourselves, that maintain the peace in our families and our minds.
It would be easy, but wrong, to describe the plot of Secrets & Lies as being about an adopted black woman in London who seeks out her natural birth mother, only to discover that her mother is white, then arranges to meet her. While that’s essentially what the film is about, it also forgoes the real subject of the movie, which is that the mother and her family have been all but destroyed by secrets and lies…and the young black woman is the catalyst to changing that situation.
After the death of her adoptive mother, Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) sets out on a journey to find her biological mother. She visits the adoption agency and is provided with her mother’s information; however, she’s shocked to learn that her mother is white. “There must be some mistake,” she says, for Hortense is black. It’s no mistake.
Meanwhile, Cynthia Rose Purley (Brenda Blethyn), a trembling wreck whose life has collapsed in a wash of drink and disappointment, is trying to get herself back on track. Her relationship with her daughter Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook) is all but nonexistent and she sees nothing of her younger brother, Maurice (Timothy Spall), who hasn’t called her in more than two years. Cynthia blames Maurice’s wife, Monica (Phyllis Logan), who she calls a “toffee-nosed cow”, for the long silence between them.
One day, Cynthia’s phone rings. It’s Hortense, claiming she is Cynthia’s long-lost daughter. After several hang-ups and redials, the two women agree to meet.
To say Cynthia is shocked would be an understatement. “But you can’t be my daughter, dearie!” Cynthia exclaims. “I mean…just look at you!”. She claims she has never even slept with a black man, but then a moment comes when she arrives at a startling revelation, and we don’t know whether to smile or hold our breaths. Her face changes. A buried memory has surfaced. She begins to sob.
The details of how Hortense was conceived are never outwardly discussed, but by watching Cynthia’s realization play out in real time, it’s easy to put two and two together. Eventually the two women fall into an easy and sweet friendship. Each offers something unique to the other: Cynthia has lost her “real” daughter’s love and respect and is desperate to find a surrogate – Hortense, who has just lost both her adoptive parents, feels rootless and is curious about the circumstances of her birth.
The movie arrives at its conclusion at, of all places, a family reunion – a barbecue where Cynthia brings Hortense to Maurice’s house and introduces her as a “friend from work”. But as tiny truths are revealed, it becomes harder and harder to keep everything from pouring out. In one unbroken take, these characters eat, drink, talk and stumble across all the secrets and lies they’ve been keeping from each other and themselves. It’s a scene that shows exactly how family gatherings are sometimes a process of tiptoeing through minefields. One wrong word, and the repressed resentments of decades will blow up in everyone’s face.
Secrets & Lies is almost theatrical in that it relies heavily on its cast to add emotion to this story. As Cynthia, Brenda Blethyn offers a stunning performance. She fully encapsulates the anxiety and insecurity a woman like Cynthia might experience in this situation. As a low-income factory worker, Cynthia is not a well-educated person, and her emotional development didn’t continue much past her adolescence. It’s why her relationship with Roxanne never really feels appropriate for a parent and child and why she tries so hard to win affection from Hortense. She still clings to Maurice, both literally and figuratively, as an upset child might cling to its father. Her performance is sad and raw and honest. Certainly a stand-out in this small but mighty cast.
Marianne jean-Baptiste has a more complex role because she must play the opposite of Cynthia. She’s the only person in the cast who’s relatively clear-sighted and is, fittingly, an optometrist. Hortense doesn’t wear her emotions on her sleeve like Cynthia, who lets them spill out onto the floor in a puddle of tears. Her performance is almost entirely internal, relying on exposition and reaction. The two women, though vastly different, play off each other very well.
Given the deep waters it dives into, Secrets & Lies is a good deal funnier than you may think. There is great relatability in this film – moments that feel so real, you’d think there was a hidden camera in your home. It speaks to our inner desire to examine our own relationships and family dynamics and, perhaps, offers comfort that even the craziest families are often in good company.
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