Moviemania

We’re not the biggest movie-goers as a rule, so it’s pretty odd that we’ve been to three flicks in the past three weeks. Thoughts on each:

I. The Producers

Largely tracks the recent Broadway show. Biggest differences were the staging of the numbers “We Can Do It” and “I Want to be a Producer”. The former was neither improved nor diminished by being made into a Manhattan travelogue. The latter benefited from creative touches that wouldn’t have been possible on stage.

Some casting surprises: Will Farrell was very good; Uma Thurman was better than I’d expected; Jon Lovitz stole his scene. While Matthew Broderick was very good, I almost expected Nathan Lane to turn to the camera and say “This bit was much funnier the first three hundred times or so.” I wonder how much better this would have been if Lane and Lovitz swapped parts.

Big question: Why isn’t it a hit?

(1) Musicals haven’t done well on screen since about The Sound of Music; and
(2) When the play opened a few years ago, joking about stereotypical homosexuality was edgy, but tolerated; now that’s considered blasphemous by the dominant cultural influences.

It will be interesting to see if this movie is disappeared a la the original Manchurian Candidate.

II. Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

I loved the books when I was a little fellow. My better half had no knowledge of them. We both loved the movie. May even see it a second time on the big screen and I haven’t done that with any film since the early 80s. The lass who played Lucy was spot-on perfect. Jadis, while nothing like my mental picture of her, was great too. I’d have expected Aslan to have a deeper voice, but that’s a pretty minor quibble. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

III. Capote

The look of the movie suggested they may have expected to have gone to a cable channel rather than to the big screen. Only a few panoramic shots of the prairie necessitate the big screen. I’m glad it got the prestige and money of a wide release and hope this movie does very well.

As has been widely noted, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Truman Capote is eerie in the degree it captures every nuance of that once-ubiquitous raconteur. No one in his right mind, though, would sit through two hours of mimicry for its own sake.

The story is about the researching and writing of In Cold Blood. And what a story it is!

We immediately learn of Capote’s narcissism when he pays a railroad porter to say how much he enjoyed Capote’s latest book on the initial trip west. This narcissism grows throughout the film up to his nearly autistic conduct at the premier of To Kill a Mockingbird.

The contrast between Capote’s crowded sybaritic Manhattan and small-town Kansas couldn’t be greater. Capote’s relativism shines through as he introduces himself to the sheriff saying he couldn’t care one way or another whether or not the killers are caught! This is one of the few times when Capote is completely truthful in conversation.

We see how Capote comes to identify with one of the killers, to the point that he says “We could have grown up in the same house and one day he left through the back door and I left through the front door.” Yet Capote constantly manipulates and dissembles with this “amigo”.

Capote exemplifies the nascent motif of the sixties – if it feels good, do it. As he comes more and more to identify with the brutal killer, he is rightly horrified at their similarity. Unfortunately, he fails to take the next steps: to embrace meaningful moral standards and repent of his own sins. In a gesture that speaks volumes, Capote mixes scotch and baby food.

As he witnesses the dramatic conclusion to his book, he can’t think about the murderers who have been executed, nor of the victims, but only of how he will “never get over” the experience of seeing and walking away, free, from the gallows to fame and fortune. It’s all about poor little Truman. Tellingly, he never completes another book and floats through the rest of his life in anesthetic clouds.