M FOR MOTHER (Mim mesle madar; Mi like Mother) (Rasool Mollagholipoor, Iran, 2006, 113 m.). THEMES: IN IRAN, MATTERS SUCH AS PTSD, ILLEGAL ABORTION; DISCRIMINATION AGAINST DISABLED CHILDREN; DIVORCE; ADULT DRUG DEPENDENCE, AND MORE. Reputed to be one of the most popular films in the history of Iranian cinema, M for Mother is an odd blend of intriguing, boldly explored themes embodied in a vehicle that is pure, over-the-top cornball melodramatic schmaltz. Set in Tehran, probably in the 1990s, the film’s themes include traditional attitudes of scorn and rejection of children born with major disabilities, and the institutional warehousing of such children; illegal abortion; illicit drug dependence in a married woman; divorce; symptoms of chronic post traumatic stress disorder in survivors of the Iraq-Iran War, including flashbacks and suicidal impulses; the long range effects of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in that war; and the sabotage of a woman’s musical career by her husband. Quite a list. How did the infamous Iranian film censors let all of that get by? The gorgeous young actress Golshifteh Farahani, member of a family that is prominent in Iranian film and theater, plays Sepideh, the central character, who refuses abortion in order to bring her almost surely deformed child into the world. The supporting cast are all able players, including Hosein Yari (Sepideh’s husband), Mohammad-Ali Shadman (their son), Jamshid Hashempur (Sepideh’s brother), and Sahar Dolatshahi (her sister-in-law). (In Persian & Armenian). Grade: low B+ (02/08).

Add : In the print I saw, the subtitle for the film's name is Mi Like Mother, which fits better, since it has to do with a woman coaching her son to hit the right notes on his violin. The film's director, Rasool Mollagholipoor, died of a heart attack at age 52, a few months after this film was released.

MA VIE EN ROSE  (Alain Berliner, Belgium, 1997).  THEME: CROSSDRESSING IN CHILDHOOD.  Georges du Fresne captivates as a 7 year old boy who wants to be a girl in this glorified sitcom set in a Parisian suburb. Everyone in the stuffy neighborhood appears to be scandalized by the boy’s behavior.  The story is well told, inoffensive, realistic as far as it goes, and very funny.  The film never insists that the boy is a transsexual or homosexual in the making, instead suspending judgment on the subject, the neighbors be damned.  (In French) Grade: B+ (03/98)

MABOROSI (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 1995). THEMES: EFFECTS OF SUICIDE ON SURVIVORS; BEREAVEMENT & LOSS. A woman seeks answers to the imponderable questions raised after her first husband, following a normal day and in a cheerful mood, suicides in a train yard. The pain of losing him is all the worse for touching a nerve in her made raw from childhood memories of her grandmother leaving to return to her native village to die. Left with a 3 month old son to raise, she ultimately remarries a widower with a young daughter living in a remote fishing village along a wild coast. She is obviously happy with him though more burdened by her past after returning to her hometown for a visit. The photography deserves special comment. In each scene the camera is stationary, in the style of Robert Bresson, and the action develops slowly, subtly. The scene is often held for a long time. The camera never moves. Each scene is independent. Once it fades, there is no return. No intercuts. No closeups. Ever. The result is to induce in the viewer a highly contemplative attitude. Remarkable achievement. (In Japanese) Grade: B+ (08/01)

THE MACHINIST (Brad Anderson, Spain, 2004). THEMES: PSYCHOTIC DEPRESSION; DISSOCIATIVE DISORDER; PARANOID STATES; PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL OF SEVERE GUILT. Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) is seriously unwell. He says he hasn’t slept in a year and his weight keeps on plummeting: he’s starting to look like a Nazi camp survivor at the end of WW II. Odd things seem to be happening to him: he thinks there’s a plot to frighten or possibly harm him. He encounters a man, Ivan (John Sharian) who later seems not to have existed at all. Or does he? Someone keeps slipping into his apartment when he’s out, leaving cryptic post-its on his refrigerator. It also appears, in the film’s opening scenes, as if Trevor might have killed someone in his apartment during a struggle: we see him, face freshly bruised, in the night rolling the body, wrapped in a carpet, into the river.

Trevor works in a machine shop. He used to get along OK with his fellow workers, though he was never one to go out for drinks and cards with the others after work. In recent months he’s become withdrawn and unsociable, even in the locker room. When another man loses an arm, mangled in a machine when Trevor, preoccupied, mistakenly turns on a switch, the others turn against him, and finally he’s fired after flying into a rage at his supervisor. He only seems at peace in the company of women. There’s Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a prostitute who’s actually quite taken with him. And Marie (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), a night waitress in a coffee shop near the airport, where Trevor passes sleepless hours visiting with her over his coffee and pie nearly every night. With each of these women, he reveals a calmer, more tender side, even though he is so emaciated. He spends Mother’s Day with Marie and her young son at an amusement park, where he snaps a photo of them that triggers a déjà vu memory: a picture he recalls taken in exactly the same spot years ago of his mother and himself as a child (his mother had since died).

Other odd twists and coincidences pile up as tension builds in this taut thriller. Indeed, my only real criticism of the film is that there are so many little things piling up, more than we need, gratuitous stuff that gets a bit too noisy for me. Screenwriter Scott Kosar just couldn’t contain himself, I guess. Trevor’s fear and agitation mount. We begin to wonder what is real and what is hallucinatory or illusion for him. The music effectively augments the sense of foreboding and danger. Composed by Roque Baños (who also did the music for Goya in Bordeaux and Sexy Beast), it is often spare, eerie, rhythmically repetitious, in the style of Philip Glass. There is also unusually haunting photography, by Xari Gimenez and Charlie Jimenez. Although it is filmed in color, the colors are leached thin, giving an effect more like old fashioned tinting of black and white material. And many, many scenes are darkly lit and seem to be rendered in varying tones of gunmetal blue-gray. This coloration reminded me of the visual treatment in the recent Russian suspense story,The Return. In mood, the film also evoked the apprehension I felt in The Return, and in Darren Aronofsky’s film, Pi.

It is clear that Trevor is in the grips of a severe psychiatric illness, but it is not one easily classifiable in conventional diagnostic terms. Part of this is simply attributable to artistic license: there’s no compelling reason why screenwriters must follow DSM-IV, after all, even though I sure do wish they would. There are strong elements to suggest psychotic depression here (extreme weight loss and insomnia, guilt feelings, irritability, agitation, probable hallucinations, possible paranoid delusions). Incompatible with this degree of depression, though, are the facts that Trevor manages to get to get to work every day and acts quite normally with women, mustering some libido on occasion as well as charm.

Even then, not all of his symptoms can be explained by the diagnosis of psychotic depression. In time certain information is revealed that lets us know there are probably dissociative elements to the illness, including, among others, clearly etched visual hallucinations (not common in psychotic depression). Ultimately we also learn that there was a very specific precipitating event for Trevor’s illness, one quite consistent with both severe depression and dissociative states, but I will not reveal that here. Could he have an anorexia nervosa-like eating disorder? Wilfully reducing his food intake while pushing himself to sustain normal physical activity? The incongruity between his extreme weight loss and normal physical motility hints at such a thing, as well as his obsessive attention to recording his daily weight in a series of post-its on the bathroom wall (going down, down, down).

The film is nearly an all-Spanish production, except for it’s director, writer and several lead actors, but it is spoken entirely in English. Mr. Bale gives an astonishing performance. I refer not only to his physical preparation for the role (he lost 63 pounds, by eating a single can of tuna and one apple a day), but the keen intelligence and understated, infectious anguish he brings to the role. Only Ralph Fiennes comes to mind as someone else who could have played Trevor as well. I’m thinking of Fiennes in Spider here. Like that film, Machinist is not likely to appeal to everyone’s tastes. But it’s undeniably an intriguing psychflick. Grade: B+ (11/04)

MAGNOLIA (Paul Thomas Anderson, US ,1999). THEMES: FAMILY CONFLICTS; DIVORCE; REGRET; REDEMPTION; MORALITY; DEATH & DYING. Here's the mother of all psychodramas. Watching this film is nothing if not an ordeal, and that may be exactly how writer/director Anderson (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights) intends it to be. For one thing, many of the scenes involve intense emotional outpourings; someone always seems to be falling apart or close to it. There is a relentless underlying tone of agitation: everyone's impatient, in a hurry, and irritable to boot, on the edge of exploding when not actually doing so. Then there's the music, often very loud, drowning out conversation. It is also a kaleidoscopic tale, full of multiple characters whose actions intersect and intercut back and forth, Robert Altman style, until it makes your head swim at times. And it all goes on like this for 3 hours.

What this ordeal is about seems to be life, or, more particularly, the botch people make of it, especially the ways in which they damage, disappoint and desert their families. And it is about regret for such behavior. TV mogul Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) is dying of cancer and rues on his deathbed the way he walked out years ago on his dying first wife, leaving her to be cared for by their 14 year old son, Jack, who grows up to be the slick and dirty talking media guru Frank T. J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), star of "Seduce and Destroy," an est-type program to cultivate male macho predation. Earl's present spouse Linda (Julianne Moore) is awash in grief over losing him and also because of her past affairs. Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) is emcee of a long running TV quiz show who learns he only has 2 months to live because of his cancer. Stricken with guilt for his past pecadillos, he tries, too bluntly, to make amends with his wife and estranged daughter, to no avail. Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) slathers in self-pity because he peaked too early, as a quiz kid years ago on Gator's TV show, and has never been able to live up to that pinnacle of childhood celebrity. And that's only the half of it.

The acting is terrific (including fine cameo turns by Michael Bowen, Henry Gibson, Luis Guzman, Albert Molina and Michael Murphy). But there is little sense of narrative, and insufficient character development. How could there be, since the film spans the actions of these people for about one day? For quite awhile this quick cut, cross sectional view of the characters, frenzied with emotion, is difficult to empathize with: we don't know these people well enough to understand their pain, even as we feel it. But in the last hour of the film their pasts are made sufficiently known to us to alter that.

When not too loud, the music, including nine songs by Aimee Mann, is often quite interesting, especially the haunting number "Save Me," which underscores a redemptive theme of forgiveness for past transgressions that emerges toward the end, although with the suggestion that it is not always easy to determine whom or what to forgive. This theme is introduced after an apocalyptic torrential rain of giant frogs levels the playing field for everyone still left standing by that point. The film begins with another theme: the occurrence of three extraordinary coincidences, three presumably historical events that have nothing to do with later circumstances in the film. The narrator suggests that these events were not coincidences at all but part of some less-than-visible design. This is Jung's familiar theme of synchronicity: the intricate arrangement of seemingly chance events to work out some destiny. The frog rainstorm appears to serve such a purpose here, altering the course of events for a number of the characters in favorable and forgiving ways.

So in this obviously moral tale, what's the take home message, the lesson to be learned? Stanley (Jeremy Blackman), the newest quiz kid celeb, pleads with his exploitative, nasty stage door father to treat him more kindly, but that possibility seems doubtful at best. It looks like Stanley may be doomed to a life like Donnie Smith's...for some people, the wheel of life seems destined to keep turning in the same rut. There are decent, determinedly helpful people in this story: Police Officer Jim (John C. Reilly) and Nurse Phil (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) are two of them, as is the young kid who attempts to save Linda's life even as he is robbing her. But they are in the minority and seem to be battling against tough odds. Does it take a plague of frogs from the sky - some sort of divine intervention or wild serendipitous good luck - to save us from ourselves and our evil ways?

Perhaps Anderson is trying to tell us that it takes a bit of each of these ingredients - the combined forces of good luck, forgiveness and the dogged determination of a few good people - to redeem us, to the extent that redemption is possible. And by indirection, he seems also to be saying that prevention - a civil and loving attitude toward one's intimates in the first place - is a whole lot better than the struggle to repair the damage caused by the absence of such caring. Grade: B+ (01/00)

MAN FACING SOUTHEAST (Eliseo Subiela, Argentina, 1987). THEME: PSYCHIATRIST AT WORK: POOR MODEL. An alien thought to be delusional is brought to a mental hospital, where his encounters with a psychiatrist take surprising turns. But the psychiatrist’s role is superficial and unedifying, he's too bogged down in his own existential despair. There’s a lot of idle talk, and the film becomes a bore. This theme was realized in more effectively in the recent film K-PAX, with Kevin Spacey as the alien and Jeff Bridges as a more convincing psychiatrist. (In Spanish) Grade: C- (09/98)

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (Otto Preminger, US, 1955). THEMES: HEROIN ADDICTION; MALINGERING. SPOILER ALERT! Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra), a lowlife poker dealer and heroin junkie in a scuzzy urban neighborhood, returns to his old haunts after a successful stint of drug rehab. at the federal narcotics treatment hospital cum prison in Lexington, Kentucky. He’s imbued with a vision of reforming his life, but inexorably falls into old, familiar routines, resulting in his relapse into addiction and a botched opportunity to start a new career as a jazz drummer. He is driven to distraction by the incessant demands of Zosch (Eleanor Parker), his manipulative, histrionic wife, who has been feigning paralysis for several years, since an auto accident in which Frankie was the driver, in order to hold on to him. He’s also wanted for the murder of his drug source, Louie (Darren McGavin). Frankie is taken in by his lover, Molly (Kim Novak), who nurses him through cold turkey withdrawal. A hopeful future for this couple is suggested when Zosch’s malingering and her responsibility for Louie’s death are exposed at the end.

This film is etched with deep contrasts. On the positive side, it was the first mainstream Hollywood film to treat the subject of opiate addiction seriously, and as such it was both controversial and successful. It is based on a novel by Nelson Algren that won the National Book Award in 1950. Algren was fascinated by the underbelly of Chicago street life at mid-century and got the details right. The screenplay did not compromise the basic honesty with which he had described the junkie life. Shot appropriately in black and white, with seedy sets created on a soundstage, the film faithfully portrays the nearly universal experience of heroin addicts of that era, before the first methadone maintenance programs appeared in the early 1960s.

About the only treatment available at that time was at Lexington and another federal hospital/prison in Ft. Worth, Texas. Like Frankie, almost all the patients were from an inner city milieu. And also like Frankie, following inpatient rehab. and incarceration that lasted typically for a year or more, virtually everyone returned to their old neighborhoods and relationships with visions of starting a better, drug free life. Yet, as many addicts have attested, even revisiting the site where they used to score heroin would provide cues that could instantly stir up overpowering sensations of drug craving. Sheltered in rehab. a thousand miles from home, these addicts were not at all prepared to cope with all the old frustrations, demands and limitations immediately re-imposed upon them once they returned home. Relapse occurred in 70% to 90%, as it does here for Frankie. In fact, it was this monotonous scenario of failure that led Dr. Marie Nyswander, who had been a psychiatrist at the Lexington hospital, to think of outpatient methadone maintenance as a strategy that might protect against relapse while providing social aid to help addicts cope with their daily lives.

Frankie’s circumstances are made distressingly clear in the film. He cannot tolerate the anger and anxiety he feels, trapped again in a vortex of failure without apparent solution. The drug soothes his dysphoria while simultaneously it becomes its driving force. The vicious cycle of addiction is nowhere better observed in film than here. The signs and symptoms of craving, intoxication and withdrawal are also demonstrated with exceptional accuracy, down to changes in pupillary diameter (wide during anxious moments or withdrawal, narrowed to pinpoint after a fix). Credit the filmmakers for pursuing the details authentically and Sinatra with a fine portrayal.

On the negative side, much of the acting in the film is extremely melodramatic and not credible. Most of the supporting characters are played over the top, like figures in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. For instance, McGavin’s Louie, a slick and evil pusher, overplays every line and gesture like a vaudeville villain. Only Arnold Stang, as Frankie’s faithful gofer, Sparrow, and Doro Merande, as the leathery but helpful neighbor, Vi, are believable. Of the other two principals in the love triangle, Novak does fairly well. Her Molly is understated, and her reticent devotion to Frankie feels genuine. Eleanor Parker, on the other hand, effuses in her typical, undifferentiated, turbo-charged emotional style. She’s way too glamorous and way too energetic in her relentlessly cloying demands on Frankie. Malingerers usually act sick and distressed. They typically appear pained or frail. Fault Preminger for orchestrating so many horridly hammy performances.

Not to be outdone by the actors, Elmer Bernstein’s musical score is also overbearing and painfully uncool. The main theme, a wastefully brassy, plodding and jerky movement, is reprised whenever Frankie’s drug craving overcomes his resolve. You start to dread its next appearance. This film called for Miles Davis, not a blaring 100 piece Hollywood orchestra. (Seen again, September, 2004). Grades: Drama: C; portrayal of heroin addiction: B+ (09/04)

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST (Aki Kaurismaki, Finland, 2002). THEMES: PSYCHOGENIC AMNESIA; SURVIVING ON SOCIETY’S MARGINS. Wait till the Bushies see this movie, which conveys the sociopolitical message that if you're down and out, don't rely on government to help you, turn instead to volunteers in your community and faith-based programs. Good grief! One can only hope that the implications are not the same in Finland! Kaurismaki, maker of quirky, unpredictable, often rough-and-tumble frolicing films (Leningrad Cowboys Go America, Total Balalaika) presents something here that is at once more somber yet full of fun as well: an oddball romantic comedy with some social commentary thrown in.

Think a moment about something really different for you, the Finnish economy: over 50% of the nation’s corporate equity resides in a single company, the cell phone giant, Nokia. Given such thin and brittle circumstances, it is not shocking to discover a bunch of very marginal folks up that way. It is these people living on the socioeconomic edge of Helsinki that interest Kaurismaki, and in particular he wants to contrast good and generous people with bad ones who affect a little hard scrabble community by the docks.

At the start, a man is beaten nearly to death by a violent gang of thieves. He has a dense retrograde amnesia to show for it (we know him only as "M" - he doesn't know his name or origins) but otherwise he recovers, thanks to the ministrations of a kindly couple who live in an old steel freight container. (The fact that he has no anterograde amnesia, unlike Leonard Shelby in Memento, shows his amnesia is psychological, not caused directly by any brain damage.) He attracts other benefactors as well, including a mock-grumpy landlord, an electrician, the owner of an earthmoving company turned bank robber, and Irma, a taciturn Salvation Army officer with whom “M” strikes up a romance (Irma is played by Kati Outinen, who got a Cannes best actress award for her work here). These folks help him get beyond the surly, contemptuous treatment he receives from the police and employment office clerks.

Things get more complicated when M’s photo is run in national newspapers and someone steps forward to identify him, although things work out OK in the end, according to the rules of this film genre. Along with its social edge, the film also includes several fine comic bits, including deadpan rapid fire vaudeville-style exchanges between M and his landlord, a running dog routine featuring Hannibal (a nod to the Lecter films), and several humorous scene entrances and exits. And, as befits Kaurismaki, there is an eclectic sound track spanning Salvation Army band tunes, 1940s torch songs, and rock-and-roll. Winner of the Cannes Grand Jury Prize in 2002. On second thought, I guess we're fortunate that the geniuses currently running our federal government are about as likely to watch a subtitled Finnish film as they are to hug a tree. (In Finnish) Grade: B+ (01/03)

MANIC   (Jordan Melamed, US, 2001).  THEMES: PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL TREATMENT OF ADOLESCENTS; GROUP THERAPY. Somber, verite-style drama about a group of maladjusted teens and the staff who work with them in a psychiatric hospital.  Lyle (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) attacks another player at a baseball game, brutally injuring him with a bat.  For this he is dispatched to the small hospital in a rural setting, where he meets a number of other kids with various behavior disorders.  There’s Mike, a scrapper and bully, a perpetual pout who becomes Lyle’s chief nemesis.  Tracey (Zooey Deschanel), who is withdrawn, timid, disengaged, a cutter, eventually becomes a tentative love interest of Lyle’s.  Lyle’s roommate Kenny is severely depressed.  Chad is supposed to be bipolar though his behavior never clearly portrays this.  In fact no one looks at all manic in this seriously mistitled film.   Dr. David Monroe (Don Cheadle) is the psychologist whose work with the kids is shown primarily in group therapy meetings. 

There isn’t much narrative to this work.  We don’t learn about the family backgrounds of most of the kids, except Kenny, who had been sexually abused by his father and later perpetrated abuse himself on younger kids.  The basis of Lyle’s explosive rages and obvious depression is never made clear.  Cheadle makes his character a credible therapist, a caring man who approaches his charges realistically, without platitudes or cliches.  He’s convincing even when he gets angry on one occasion and throws a couple of chairs around, also a favorite ward pastime among the kids.  The tense and eruptive atmosphere on the ward is intimately conveyed by the actors and by the handheld digvid photography, with its many abrupt angle changes and effectively shaky close-ups.  Gordon-Levitt gives a good account of an alienated, furious young man who gradually opens up to a more caring attitude toward others and himself.  But apart from Cheadle’s turn, there is nothing particularly new in this film, nothing that wasn’t covered as well or better in Girl, Interrupted or even in David and Lisa, 40 years ago.   Grade: B (06/04)

MAN’S JOB (Miehen työ) (Aleksi Salmenperä, Finland, 2007, 97 m.). SPOILER ALERT! THEMES: MAN IN SEX TRADE; SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS WITH AGING WOMEN, GIRL WITH DOWN SYNDROME(!). Tommi Korpella plays Juha, a robustly framed but gaunt, sullen, seemingly defeated man, weighed down by the responsibility of caring for a depressed spouse, Katja (Maria Heiskanen), who pouts for want of a new car and washing machine, and two young children, one of whom isn’t actually his. We meet him just when he is being fired from his factory job. Like Vincent in the French film Time Out, Juha cannot bring himself to tell Katja that he’s lost his job, so he fakes going to work for over two months. Privately, he decides to become an independent handyman but doesn’t let on that he’s not going to the factory.

When that cover gets blown, he ‘goes to work’ at another factory. He’s gone to work elsewhere, all right. He’s stumbled onto a lucrative business that will bring in the dough to buy Katja the goodies she longs for: he joins the sex trade! Yes, Juha becomes a working class gigolo, catering to the needs of older women and even a teen with Down Syndrome, whose parents have hired Juha to teach the girl about sex, though all she wants is to kiss him. Things fall apart when Juha is injured twice in one day and lands in the hospital. A believable drama with enough comedic touches to steer clear of becoming maudlin. It's well done. With Jani Volanen as Olli, Katja’s cheesy alcoholic first husband (and Juha’s grudging accomplice). (In Finnish) Grade: B+ (02/08)

A MAP OF THE WORLD (Scott Elliott, US, 1999). THEMES: LIFE CRISIS; IMPULSIVE PERSONALITY. SPOILER ALERT! Sigourney Weaver (Alice) and Julianne Moore (Alice's best friend, Teresa) give moving performances in a story that is emotionally compelling even if not a great flick. Alice finds herself, as she puts it, at the bottom of the world when, in succession, her friend Teresa's daughter drowns while Alice is caring for her; she is jailed on charges of child abuse by an angry mom who claims Alice sexually misused her son in Alice's role as a school nurse; the entire town turns against her and her family; and her husband is forced to sell the dairy farm that had been his dream to own and run, to find the cash to get Alice out of jail and pay for her legal defense. The family needs to resettle elsewhere anyway to begin again, which they do after Alice is acquitted. It's surely a soap opera story, but the quality of the turns given by the principal actresses saves it from being maudlin. As a character study, Weaver's Alice shows a fine example of someone whose flip and often wryly humorous candor, general penchant for disorganization and impulsivity lead her repeatedly into trouble. Grade: B- (06/01)

MARIA FULL OF GRACE (Joshua Marston, US/Colombia, 2004). THEMES: DRUG SMUGGLING; STUDY OF A WONDERFULLY STRONG PERSONALITY. SPOILER ALERT! Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a young woman intent upon finding a better life than she can ever hope for if she remains mired in her family’s little town near Bogota, stripping thorns from roses in a floral export sweatshop, where she must beg to pee and then make up the lost production. She’s tired of supporting her mother and her sister and baby nephew on the pittance she brings home. Early on we see that she can be bold: she shames her loser boyfriend by insisting he scale the face of a three story building and join her on the roof if he wants sex that day. (He chickens out.) Next she quits her job, sending her dependent family into a tizzy. She meets a guy from the city one evening at a local dance. When he presents her with an opportunity to make much more money and travel to the U.S. as a drug smuggling “mule,” it doesn’t take her long to decide to attempt this dangerous strategy for her own emancipation.

Having established these matters in the first half hour or so, the film thereafter is devoted to the drama of mules. Maria is taught how to swallow small sausage-like, plastic wrapped tubes containing cocaine, presumably (I don’t believe the specific drug is actually mentioned in the film), practicing first by swallowing large grapes. Preparing for her flight, she is given laxatives, her throat is sprayed with a local anaesthetic to make the task easier, and she then manages to swallow and keep down 62 bags. She’s given a flight ticket, some money, a hotel destination, and the promise of more money if she succeeds in getting through to deliver the drugs. If she doesn’t deliver the full shipment of 62 bags, she will be punished and forfeit the money. If she disappears with the drugs, her family back home will be harmed. She discovers on her flight to Newark that her friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega), who worked with her back home at the flower factory, is also aboard; she too has signed on as a mule. So is Lucy (Guilied Lopez), an experienced mule Maria met earlier. And another woman – 4 mules in all on this one flight. The traffickers do this, calculating that if one is seized at the U.S. entry point, it will be easier for the others to get through undetected.

Serious problems unfold after everyone reaches Newark. Maria is seized on suspicion of being a mule but escapes when a urine pregnancy test is positive (it’s no surprise to Maria), preventing authorities from X-raying her abdomen. Yenny and Lucy pass through without incident. The fourth woman is caught and led away in handcuffs. Lucy subsequently dies as a result of a drug overdose, when a drug bag ruptures inside her and she absorbs a huge amount. Maria and Yenny escape harm, after more adventures in Queens, New York City, where they travel to find Lucy’s sister, who lives there in a Colombian ex-pat community. In the end, Yenny returns to Colombia but Maria, at the last minute, decides to stay behind, to return to Queens, where she has met a few helpful people already.

Writer-director Marston had only a 1998 NYU film school diploma and one short grad school film under his belt when he decided to make this film, his first feature. He literally spent years – at least two – researching his subject. He met a woman in New York who had been a mule. He talked to authorities. He visited Colombia. His screenplay and the photography and editing are superb. The story unfolds straightforwardly. No gimmicks, no flashbacks, no fancy or hectic intercuts. The pace is deliberate, the style declarative, realistic and clear. It is sure work. He handles his actors with great skill. The three principal women offer fine performances.

This was Ms. Moreno first film acting experience. She hails from Bogota, where she studied acting at a theater. Someone there sent word to the casting agency for this film in New York, suggesting her for the role of Maria. She has an extraordinary screen presence. There is a scene near the end, at a mortuary where Lucy’s body lies in a casket, where Maria is shown in a close up in which she strikingly resembles the Mona Lisa, that uncanny melding of beauty and enigma. With regard to her acting, Ms. Moreno is able to convincingly convey a nuanced range of attitudes and feelings: vulnerability and strength, resolve and fear, hesitation and decisiveness. (In Spanish) Grade: A- (12/04)

MARTY (Delbert Mann, US, 1955). THEMES: PERSONALITY DISORDER, MIXED FEATURES INCLUDING AVOIDANT, PASSIVE-DEPENDENT, DEPRESSIVE. POSSIBLY ALSO SOCIAL PHOBIA. SPOILER ALERT! One of the great character studies to emerge among 1950s American films, Marty featured Ernest Borgnine in the title role. Marty is the quintessential bachelor, 34, with no prospects, living at the family home in New York City with his widowed mother, while six sibs have married and gone their ways. He spends his days working in a neighborhood butcher shop and his evenings hanging out with his lifelong pal, Angie, another misfit with too many quirks to attract a steady girl. Marty knows he’s not an attractive man: coarse featured and overweight, timid around women, unable to make small talk.

After military service in WWII, he had returned home with no sense of direction for his life. He thought of college. But his loneliness got the best of him back then. He had dark periods of depression, and more than once considered throwing himself onto the tracks in front of an oncoming subway train. He tried and tried to meet a woman, but was always rebuffed, to the point where, before we meet him, he has given up, doesn’t go to the dance hall anymore on Saturday night, protects himself from further hurt that way. And yet, in his more reasonable, reflective moments, Marty knows he’s a good person, a good man like his father was, somebody who is fair, hardworking, honest, always ready to help out family and friends. No longer prone to depressive bouts, he still is a sensitive man, often cries sentimentally about things. He’s not yet devoid of ambition: the owner of the butcher shop wants to retire and Marty is thinking he might be able to buy the business.

The story takes place over the course of a single weekend. Marty’s youngest brother just got married and folks are chatting about it. As usual, everyone – his mother, the women customers in the butcher shop - asks Marty when he’s going to get married. On the advice of a nephew, Marty’s mother urges him to go down to the dance hall on Saturday night. “There’s lots of tomatoes there,” she says, quoting her nephew. He hasn’t been there in ages but, with nothing better to do, reluctantly, he does go to the dance with Angie, where, lo and behold, he does meet a woman, Clara, whose company he enjoys. They have a lot in common – lonely ones left along the romantic sidelines of life. They spend hours together at the dance, then at a coffee shop, talking. Marty opens up in an almost manicky outpouring about his life, and it is here we learn about his background, frustrations and hopes. At the end of the evening they stop by Marty’s house for him to get more money to accompany Clara home. Marty’s mother arrives from a visit to her sister’s and briefly meets Clara. Marty and Clara share that they want to see each other again and agree he will call the next day, Sunday afternoon, and they’ll go to a movie that night. They lightly kiss goodnight.

Next day everybody close to Marty seems unnerved by his good cheer and interest in this new girl, Clara. Angie is out of sorts, feels displaced and complains that Clara’s a “dog,” – that Marty could do better. Marty’s mother says she didn’t like Clara, complains that she isn’t Italian, and that she has a college degree, which makes her suspect, “close to being a person on the street,” Mother clucks. Marty tries to get advice from his cousin, an accountant, on buying the butcher shop, but he’s in the midst of a marital quarrel and dismissively yells at Marty that he’s lucky to be single and unencumbered, and shouldn’t saddle himself with a mortgage or a marriage. Marty’s spirits sag. He mopes around the house until evening. He doesn’t call Clara as promised. That night he hangs aimlessly around the tavern with Angie and the other guys, as usual, no one knowing where to go or what to do. Suddenly, as if he has had an epiphany, Marty rhetorically announces that he’s not going to hang around any more like this, that he’s got better prospects. He dashes inside the tavern to the phone and rings up Clara. Anglie sticks his nose into the phone booth and Marty slides the door shut. This final scene fades.

This perfect story was written by the great Paddy Chayefsy. It captivated people everywhere. The film and Borgnine won Oscars and many other awards in 1955, including the Palme d’Or for best film at Cannes, where the contributions of Chayefsky, Mann, Borgnine and Blair were acknowledged. (Seen again November, 2004). If you like this film, try James Mangold’s more recent film, Heavy, about a somewhat similar character. Grades: (drama) B+; (character development) A- (11/04)

MARVIN'S ROOM (Jerry Zaks, US, 1996, 98 min). THEMES: DEATH & DYING; RECONCILIATION OF FAMILY (SISTERS) IN RESPONSE TO ILLNESS; MIDDLE STAGE DEMENTIA WITH CATASTROPHIC REACTIONS; DEFIANT, DEPRESSED ADOLESCENT ADJUSTMENT DISORDER; CONTRASTING PERSONALITIES OF TWO SISTERS. Spoiler Alert! Several themes and conditions are probed in this well enacted psychodrama, adapted from a stage production by the playwright, Scott McPherson. Older sister Bessie (Diane Keaton) finds that she has leukemia and must undergo chemo. This will compromise her ability to care for her seriously demented father, Marvin (Hume Cronyn), and her forgetful, soap opera addicted old aunt Ruth (Gwen Verdon).

Bessie’s best hope of surviving her cancer is to receive a bone marrow transplant from a compatible relative. This leads her to break a two decade silence with her estranged younger sister Lee (Meryl Streep) in Ohio, whom Bessie now asks to come to Florida to be tested for bone marrow compatibility. Lee grudgingly responds, brining along her two sons for testing as well. They are young Charlie (Hal Scardino) and his older brother Hank (Leonardo DiCaprio). The brothers are a study in contrasts. Charlie is meek, compliant, eager to stay out of trouble. Hank, contrarily, is an angry, defiant, and beneath it all, depressed teen who misses his father, a man he idolizes in a highly distorted manner. Hank blames Lee for the divorce that occurred and cannot accept the truth that his father was an abusive man who often injured Hank as a kid through beatings.

Hank and Lee are perpetually at war. Lee does all the wrong things, attempting to control Hank, criticizing him at every turn, offering no love or tenderness. Indeed, there is little love in her life. She struggles just to survive, keep food on the table, and push ahead to finish beautician school. In fact Lee and Hank are a lot alike: basically affiliative, warmhearted people who have become avoidant and hardened in a self protective manner. Hank, in a fury early in the film, actually burns down the house to retaliate against his mother and is packed off to a public mental hospital for care. We see a scene or two when Lee encounters Hank’s psychiatrist, Dr. Charlotte (Margo Martindale). It’s a gratuitously unflattering turn with a strained cliché at one point, when Dr. C. and Lee trade questions about questions (“How do you feel about my asking how you feel about my asking how you feel about Hank?”) Sigh.

Bessie is a different sort. She’s full of readily accessible loving feelings for her father and her aunt. There is a sufficient residue of bad feelings between her and Lee that Bessie is more reticent when her sister and the boys arrive, but Bessie’s heart goes out immediately to Hank, who responds to her tender, accepting, unconflicted adoration in a highly positive manner. It marks the beginning of a transformation in Hank that eventually comes to include a revision in his regard for his mother. Lee too is touched by Bessie’s heartfulness and her selfless care of their father. In the end, although the tests rule out all three as potential bone marrow donors - thus making it clear that Bessie’s remaining time will be limited, Lee, Hank and Charlie decide to stay on and pitch in to help everyone.

DiCaprio’s is a splendid performance, believable in both his initial deviance and in his subsequent transformation. It was his best work after playing the developmentally disabled Arnie in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (until his role as Howard Hughes in this year’s The Aviator). Ms. Streep is also quite outstanding here. Mr. Cronyn deserves special praise for the clinical authenticity of his role as a person with late middle stage dementia. He is essentially non-verbal and somnolent. His frequent exaggerated startle responses vividly portray the distressing catastrophic reactions so common in many demented persons.

Ms. Keaton’s turn will be appreciated more by some viewers than others. For me, there is an ever present tendency in many of her roles for her emotional expression to register as pathos, an almost maudlin sentimentality. Bessie is such a teary, self effacing goody goody. And yet any of us can think of people we know who are like her. And we can only wonder how many helpless people around us would suffer if it were not for the self-sacrificing generosity of caretakers like Bessie. I haven’t mentioned that Robert DiNiro plays Bessie’s physician. It’s an odd little role in which he bumbles a lot (he’s a pathologist pressed into patient care when a partner abruptly leaves the group practice). I don’t see this role or its star as benefiting the movement of the film.

This was a first – and to date the only – feature film for Mr. Zaks, the director, who has had a celebrated career as a director of Broadway comedies and who has also directed several TV dramas. Grade: B (12/04)

THE MATADOR (Richard Shepard, US/Germany/Ireland, 2005, 96 m). THEME: ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, WITH ONSET OF PANIC ATTACKS AND REMORSE IN MIDDLE LIFE. Matador is a silly movie. It pairs up Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan), an internationally operating hit man, an assassin for hire to dispose of people anywhere in the world, and Danny Wright, (Greg Kinnear), a good natured, common middle class guy. They meet at a hotel; both are abroad in the same city on “business.” Improbably, they more-or-less hit it off, mainly through Julian’s rough charm and persistence, because he’s lonely.

The film is noteworthy because Mr. Brosnan does a truly splendid job of portraying a man with a decidedly antisocial personality (he habitually lies, cheats and, of course, kills people with aplomb), but also a man who is reaching a point in his sordid life where his conscience is starting to catch up with him. He has panic attacks and bad dreams, in which he himself is the target of the assassin. His anxiety bouts begin to interfere with his ability to get his work done, which incurs a stern response from his handler, Mr. Randy (Philip Baker Hall) and the anonymous bigshots who pay the bills.

This depiction is clinically authentic. I have worked with sociopaths who, in middle life, can become vulnerable to severe depression, remorse, and anxiety disorders as they recall their misdeeds. What is masterful here is that Brosnan not only nails the psychopathology accurately, but he does so with a nearly over-the-top humor that is delectable. With Hope Davis in an amusing turn as Danny’s giddy wife, Bean. Grade: overall (as a comedy) low B; for the portrayal of antisocial personality: A-. (01/06)

MATCHSTICK MEN (Ridley Scott, US, 2003). THEMES: ANXIETY DISORDERS; OCD, GAD, PANIC. Nicolas Cage excels in portraying men with various mental troubles. He was convincing as a suicidal alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas, and as a PTSD sufferer in Bringing Out the Dead. Here he gives another believable turn as Roy, who suffers from a panoply of symptoms in the anxiety disorder spectrum. Roy is burdened by agoraphobia and is also fearful of dirt and disorder. He is a compulsive cleaner and organizer, and must count one-two-three before opening any door or window. Without medication or attention to his rituals, or when his purposely isolated life is disrupted by the intrusions of others, he develops myriad symptoms of anxiety and panic: tics, hyperactivity, nausea and hyperventilation, so that he must breathe into a paper bag to calm himself.

Roy is a paradoxical guy: in spite of being a bundle of nerves, he makes his living as a confidence man, a trade we think of as requiring nerves of steel. He’s made a bundle of money this way and spent his share of time in prison. He also smokes like a chimney, a pretty dirty habit for an otherwise fastidious fellow. He works with Frank (Sam Rockwell), his devoted longtime partner, to swindle unsuspecting folks out of a few hundred dollars apiece in various scams.

One day, Frank hooks a sucker for a much bigger potential payoff. Things move along reasonably well until Roy’s new psychiatrist stirs his curiosity about a child he probably fathered – his wife was pregnant when they split up 14 years ago, and he has had no contact since. The psychiatrist agrees to contact Roy’s ex-wife on his behalf, and, long story short, Roy’s teenage daughter Angela (Alison Lohman) soon appears in his life, rapidly joining the team as a budding con artist in her own right. There are surprises in store for Roy and us viewers, but to reveal them would spoil the fun. The film is enjoyable enough, and a fine showcase of anxiety problems by Cage, who stays in character. His symptoms do wax and wane, but the changes make sense in light of the changing circumstances that surround him. Grades: drama: B; psychiatric portrayal: A- (07/04)

ME, MYSELF AND IRENE (Bobby and Peter Farrelly, US, 2000). THEME: GROSS MISPORTRAYAL OF SCHIZOPHRENIA AS "SPLIT PERSONALITY" Banal and tiresome slapstick comedy about Charlie (Jim Carrey), a model state trooper and single father who develops a hostile alternate personality (Hank) after years of repressing his rage whenever anyone took advantage of him, which was very often. The first 40% of the film brings us to his psychiatric crisis and its imperfect control by a medication.

To give him a break from routine, Charlie's boss sends him to accompany Irene (Renee Zellweger), a suspect who is wanted in another state. As it turns out, she has been innocently involved with a racketeer, a member of a group that is headed by corrupt cops, who chase after Carrey and Zellweger for the remaining 60% of the film. Throughout, Carrey flips with dizzying speed between Charlie and Hank, and Zellweger tries valiantly to adapt to each of these very different people. Their acting in these wildly varying encounters is the one good thing about the film, aside from the antics of Charlie's three black sons, all smart (their father the dwarf was a Mensa chapter president) and all given to using the term "motherfucker" in every sentence.

Just to offer some of the subtle comic flavor of the film, sight gags include a gigantic dildo what Irene uses as a blackjack, and a sheriff's deputy left handcuffed and pants down by Charlie's teenage sons, with a chicken stuffed up his ass. Although this movie was assailed with great fanfare by NAMI as a slur against the mentally ill, in no way does Carrey seem like a person suffering from schizophrenia, nor are mentally ill persons put down in the film. Granted, "Hank" becomes sexually aggressive toward Zellweger, and at one point scares a child and drives a car though a barbershop window, but his aggression is otherwise all bluster...he routinely loses all the fights he picks.

This film could be construed as a far more serious affront to law enforcement officers, African Americans, and dwarfs, than to the mentally ill. But the largest group slandered by this movie is the viewing public. We are cheated by stale thin gruel here...a script written 10 years ago by the Farrellys and set aside as too dull to pursue. Thanks a lot for getting back to it, guys. The only reason I include this film is because NAMI made such a fuss about it. For more on that topic, see my article, "Me, Myself and Laurie: NAMI Takes on Hollywood." Grades: comedy: F; portrayal of schizophrenia: F (07/00)

ME MYSELF I (Philippa [Pip] Karmel, Australia, 1999). THEME: WOMEN'S ISSUES. Pamela (Rachel Griffiths) is a single 30-something who is a highly successful journalist. But she longs for Robert, a man she left 13 years ago, who was her "Mr. Right," and wonders what might have been. Struck unconscious by a car, she awakens magically transported into the life she would have had with this man, complete with three children. Griffiths is terrific: she reminds me of Jamie Lee Curtis in physical vigor and comedic flair. And there are some clever scenes, e.g., the early torrid sex scene that turns out to be a porn video, or the bathtub "suicide" scene with the hairdryer. But this film is too deeply mired in all the tired clich é s about women's frustrations and responsibilities we've known for a long time. It would all have been fresh and funny 25 years ago. This is not to say that the women's movement has driven male chauvinistic excesses into full retreat anywhere, and certainly hardly at all in the developing world. But is the Aussie women's movement really so far behind the times that this film can be popular there in the year 2000? Grade: C (02/00)

ME WITHOUT YOU  (Sandra Goldbacher, UK, 2002).  THEME: BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER.  This is not a good film.  It is a soap opera about an enduring twisted friendship between two women who grew up together.  Marina is a classic borderline personality; Holly is merely dull.  Almost everyone needs a good spanking.  The dialogue is predictable, the photography undistinguished, and the pop musical score putrid.  Nevertheless, the film does nicely capture one sort of expression of borderline personality seen in people, usually women, with major identity problems. Namely, it is the tendency to form pathologically close attachments to other people, without whom the person does not feel whole or complete.  Marina demonstrates this identity problem in a highly instructive manner.  Grades: (as drama): D; (for clinical authenticity of Marina’s character): B (01/02)

ME YOU THEM (Andrucha Waddington, Brazil, 2001). THEMES: "LOVE AND WORK"; MULTIPLE LOVERS LIVING TOGETHER. Sigmund Freud was once cornered at a London cocktail party and asked to state in plain terms what was necessary for a person to live a life free from neurosis. His reply was elegant and deservedly famous. "Liebe und arbeit," he said. Love and work. This is a film about love and work, both in great abundance. The script was inspired by the true story of a woman living in a tiny hamlet in rural Brazil who had taken three husbands, concurrently. After reading of her situation in a newspaper, co-screenwriter (with Waddington) Elena Soarez actually sought out this woman, visited with her over several days, and found the four adults living in apparent harmony with a gaggle of their children.

In the film, Darlene (Regina Casé) is a rawboned powerful woman with a delectable smile who works 11 hours a day cutting sugar cane, while in her spare time she runs a household for her lazy, aging husband, Osias, who does nothing but scowl and listen to the radio. She bears a son who does not resemble Osias, an observation that is not lost on him. Distanced from him all the more, Darlene grows restive. Conveniently, Zezinho, Osias's middle aged cousin by marriage, comes to live with them. He is a passive sweetie who takes over cooking and brings a hot lunch to Darlene in the fields each day. She takes him as a clandestine lover and bears him a son as well. Enter Ciro, a virile young fellow who comes to cut cane. Osias invites Ciro to stay for awhile as a way to distract Darlene from Zezinho, for Osias, no dummy, suspects what's going on. Whereupon, of course, Darlene takes up romantically with Ciro, much to Zezinho's chagrin. When she bears Ciro a son, it is no secret to anyone. Tensions by this point have understandably risen.

The film is gorgeously photographed, with careful attention to details as well as breathtaking panoramic views of the desolate, bleached countryside. The opening credits are exquisite, with text running next to a lit lantern in the foreground of a darkened room, as someone dresses in the shadowy background. We catch the daily rhythms of household chores, from washing clothes by hand in a muddy pond to Zezinho shaving Osias. Soulful folk sambas drive the dancers at the local tavern on Saturday nights. There is abundant grace, humor, accommodation and beauty throughout this film, and, in the daily rhythms of love and work, one cannot help believing that these people have figured things out pretty well, however much a fable we are inclined to think this story must be.

My partner wasn't as enthused about this film as I was. One thing that bothered her were the violations of women's rights suggested by Darlene's situation. Things like Darlene's acquiescence to Osias's demands that she run every aspect of the household while he lazes about. And this on top of her other major burdens, from working full time during sugar cane harvest to her involvement in an endless cycle of pregnancies and child rearing. Female sensibilities may very well be rubbed wrong here for just cause. But I also think that it is a conceit of this film to suggest that Darlene is very much in charge of her life.

She is, in the first place, portrayed as a very strong woman, physically, sexually, psychologically, socially. She doesn't need to remain stranded in that isolated hamlet. She had proven earlier in her life that she could make it alone in the city. She returned to visit her mother, not necessarily to stay. She made a pragmatic choice to marry Osias, although it is true that he turned the tables on her, failing to keep his promises about sharing power, after the wedding. Nevertheless, she is not afraid of him and to a considerable degree does as she pleases. She likes to boogie, and on Saturday nights she dances close with any man she chooses, no matter that her husband is looking on and obviously not happy about it.

So who's exploiting whom in this circumstance? Above all, Darlene likes tail, and she arranges to get a lot of loving, at home and away. The other thing that dampened my partner's enjoyment of the film was her increasing apprehension that Darlene might be killed. For what my partner knew, but I did not, is that to this day in Brazil a man can kill his wife for something like being cuckolded, and, if he can avoid arrest for a short time, he will thereafter be a free man. (In Portuguese) Grade: B+ (01/01)

MEAN CREEK (Jacob Aaron Estes, US, 2004). THEMES: MORAL CHALLENGES IN ADOLESCENCE; TEEN CONDUCT DISORDER - BULLYING; YOUNG TEEN DOMINATION BY AN OLDER LEADER. SPOILER ALERT! The title’s wrong. This isn’t a creek, it’s the Lewis River, in Washington State. And the river’s not mean, it’s George, the trash mouth fat kid, that’s mean. So the title should be “Mean River” or, better, “Mean Streak.” This exemplifies the larger problems in this debut filmmaking effort by writer-director Estes. Almost everything in the movie is just a bit off. Estes, who appeared for a Q & A at the screening I attended, says he wanted to make a teen morality film. The idea for it was drawn from his own recent experience of being bullied repeatedly by a huge man at pickup basketball games in his San Francisco neighborhood.

Here’s the story: George (Josh Peck, a 17 year old actor) is an unhappy, surly fellow who strives to share his misery by hassling all the other kids around. Early in the film he beats up Sam (Rory Culkin, age 14). Sam’s older brother and his friends decide on revenge, to teach George a lesson by inviting him on a boat trip, then forcing him to strip nude and walk home. Things go sour. George accidentally drowns. Marti (Scott Mechlowicz), ringleader of the group, insists they bury the body and pretend nothing has happened. The others grudgingly go along, but, back home later that night, after a lengthy tussle with their scruples, the rest of the group decides to do the right thing and disclose to George’s mother and police what really happened. Marti, fearful of imprisonment, robs a convenience store and presumably goes on the lam.

As I said, there’re a lot of little things wrong with the film. A majority of the young actors don’t quite hold one’s interest. Is it the actors, the script or Estes’s lack of directing skill that accounts for this problem? We can’t be sure. These kids aren’t amateurs plucked from a local casting call. Most have impressive acting resumes. Peck and Carly Schroeder (who plays Millie, Sam’s puppy love interest) are the exceptions: both are excellent. Some events in the story don’t hang together quite properly. We know parental vigilance is often lax these days, but the implicit notion that nobody’s parents were at all curious about the long daytrip to the river is a bit hard to swallow. And it seemed to take forever for the other kids to make a half hearted effort to save George after he fell into the river.

The film is decently photographed, but the music - gloomy and foreboding - is relentlessly manipulative. Someone in the audience asked Estes if he had considered using this film to teach middle schoolers about morality and groupthink. He said yes but it would be an unlikely occurrence, given its R rating (based on sexual references and foul language). The question gets at another issue, perhaps, namely that there is a none-too-subtle didacticism to the film. It’s terribly earnest, and there’s not a trace of humor, nothing quirky or endearing, to pierce the moral mantle of this film. (Filmed in Estacada and other sites near Portland.) Still, the film has substance and is six cuts above the usual trash served up to young teens by Hollywood. Grade: B (08/04)

MEMENTO  (Christopher Nolan, US, 2000).  THEME:  ANTEROGRADE AMNESTIC DISORDER FOLLOWING CLOSED HEAD INJURY.  Nolan has made an unusual murder mystery about California lowlifes.  The protagonist, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), sustained a severe closed head injury by the assailant who also killed Leonard’s wife in the same incident.  Leonard wants to find the killer.  Trouble is, he cannot remember anything for longer than a few moments.  To compensate, he takes notes, snaps endless numbers of Polaroid photos, tracks things on a huge map, even has tattoos of clues written in his skin.  Still, not only does the killer elude him, but the people who claim to want to help him typically prove to have their own nasty, self-serving agendas.  The film starts in the present, goes a few minutes forward, fades, then goes back hours or days, starts up again for a few minutes, and then spirals or cycles backward once again.  One set of givens is added to another, but in reverse order.  We are as puzzled and confused by the disorder of things as Leonard. This is the film's special strength: to force us to feel the consequences of Leonard’s disorder. But in the long run it is just flashy gimmickry layered atop a neo-noir story about a bunch of sleazy people. Incidentally, the whodunit mystery is more or less solved by the end, but we needn't dwell on spoiler details here. The film reunites two stars from the film, The Matrix, Carrie-Ann Moss (Trinity) and Joe Pantoliano (Cypher).

Memory disorders like Leonard's, by the way, are common in alcoholics (Alcohol Amnestic Disorder) but unusual in head injuries. Clinically, co-writers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan (who are brothers) deserve a prize for getting organic amnesia right. Every other film I know of that features traumatic amnesia, where brain injury is allegedly the cause of memory loss, only demonstrates retrograde amnesia (mind's a blank for everything prior to the knock on the head), but memory works fine afterwards. Sorry, folks, but that only occurs in psychogenic amnesias. Grade: B- (06/01)

METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, US, 2004). THEMES: PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT COACHING; COUNSELING PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS. In 2001, the legendary heavy metal rock band Metallica had reached the nadir of their 20-year association. No new album or tour for several years. Heck, they were barely able to speak to one another. Their managers, worried that a major cash cow was going mad, brought in Phil Towle, a self proclaimed “performance enhancement coach,” to facilitate improved relations among the band members. A new album and tour were envisioned. And filmmakers Berlinger and Sinofsky (who had made the provocative documentaries Brother’s Keeper and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills) were hired to make a promotional film that would cover the recording sessions and tour.

Before group sessions with Towle could even begin, however, long time bass player Jason Newsted quit the band. (Metallica producer Bob Rock, a journeyman bassist himself, was tapped to fill in for the album.) The film gradually morphed into a full scale documentary, a rare two-year long, fly-on-the-wall chronicle that is part psychodrama and part musical odyssey as the band struggles to create new songs while living through a period of acrimony and doubts about their future together. After watching this film, you'll better appreciate such things as the effort that goes into making a rock album, the difficulties of keeping dueling alpha male musicians somehow working in harmony, and the huge profits to be made if you are lucky enough to become a useful performance coach for a mega-band like this one. Grade: B+ (08/04)

MIFUNE  (Soren Kragh-Jacobsen, Denmark, 2000).  THEME: SCHIZOPHRENIA. This film progresses well as a realistic, often humorous story of Kresten, a young man who thought he had escaped his roots – growing up on an impoverished farm, where his mother suicided, his only sib is schizophrenic, and his father is in decline.  He has just married into a wealthy family when news arrives that his father has died, forcing his return to the farm to arrange care for his brother.  Not a great film but it features an excellent portrayal of Rud, the schizophrenic brother, by Jesper Asholt.  (In Danish).  Grade: B (02/00)

MISTER FOE (Hallam Foe) (David Mackenzie, UK, 2007, 95 m.). THEMES: ADOLESCENT GRIEF; SEEKING A SUBSTITUTE FOR A LOST MOTHER; ADOLESCENT VOYEURISM. Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, Dear Wendy) plays Hallam, an aggrieved young man who cannot seem to get over his mother’s death two years earlier, complicated by the fact that his father rather quickly took on a new wife, whom, Hallam suspects, killed his mother. Miserable in the company of his father and stepmother, Hal ventures off to Edinburgh on his own, gets a job as a dishwasher in an upscale hotel, and meets several intriguing people there, foremost of whom is the personnel manager, Kate (Sophia Myles, from Tristan + Isolde and Art School Confidential), who looks just like Mom. Things work themselves out in this play that is part romantic comedy, part whodunit, with themes of voyeurism and suicide circling about as well. With Ciarán Hinds, Claire Forlani, Ewen Bremner and Maurice Roëves in well played supporting roles. (Filmed in Edinburgh, Glasgow and the border country near Peebles, Scotland.). Grade: B (02/08)

MONDAYS IN THE SUN  (Fernando Leon de Aranoa, Spain, 2003).  THEME: PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF UNEMPLOYMENT. Here's a new recipe I recommend.  First, select several fine actors - mature men of varying ages - and stir gently to form an ensemble; marinate in the social realism of a Ken Loach film; fold in the running conversational style and understated humor of a good French comedy; top it all off with a few drinks; finally let the mixture slowly simmer for 115 minutes, and, viola, you will have this marvelous new movie from Spain! (Like the Biblical meal for 5,000, this recipe can serve an unlimited number of viewers.)  Javier Bardem (who so ably played Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls) leads the ensemble here, a group of men who have lost their jobs because of closure of their shipyard.  They build ships cheaper these days in Korea: it's the global economy, stupid. 

We see the varied but in general devastating effects of unemployment and poverty on these men, their families, and their bonds with one another, bonds that at times become quite strained. Santa (Bardem), a bachelor, tries to help Amador, who is depressed and drinking far too much since his wife deserted him, and Jose, whose pride has made him so irritable toward his wife, now the breadwinner, that she also is on the point of leaving him.  While trying to patch it all together for these folks, Santa also needs to find some anchor for his own life, which is adrift (literally toward the end). 

There are many amusing circumstances here, like Santa's quirky conversations with the developmentally challenged watchman at the shipyard, or the night Santa agrees to substitute for a babysitter at the home of a wealthy family and then invites his buddies over to drink from the well stocked bar at poolside.  But there is a darker side to this work that, lest you only think of Spain, is pertinent to our own economic circumstances here in the U.S. these days.  Bardem is by turns furious, sad, charming and paternal.  But above all he shows a fierce loyalty and devotion to both his friends and his principles. A wonderful acting turn. This film keeps getting better and better as it progresses.  (In Spanish)  Grade: B+ (02/03)

MONSIEUR HIRE (Patrice Leconte, France, 1989). THEMES: VOYEURISM; SCHIZOID PERSONALITY DISORDER. SPOILER ALERT! Taut erotic thriller. Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire) is a beautiful but cunning, psychopathic woman who seems paradoxically titillated when she discovers she is the object of noctural spying by a neighbor, M. Hire (French comedian Michel Blanc), a sad, lonely, homely bachelor dressmaker. He becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young woman in the neighborhood. Hire himself suspects that Alice's petty gangster boyfriend is the culprit and wants to protect her against this man. But Alice has another agenda, and boldly pursues Hire to to help protect the boyfriend. She even frames Hire at the end, after he has offered her his devoted love and protection. The film leaves an unanswered question: is M. Hire’s death a suicide or an accidental event as he attempts a desperate rooftop escape? Lesser unanswered questions: What on earth are the mice for in his dressmaking salon? And why does he arrange to kill them beside the railroad track before his planned departure for Switzerland with Alice? (In French) Grades: drama B+; psychological characterization of the voyeuristic man: A- (09/04)

MONSTER  (Patty Jenkins, US, 2003).  THEMES: EFFECTS OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA; ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY. SPOILER ALERT! This docudrama tells the story of an unusual serial killer, a woman, Aileen Carol ("Lee") Wuornos, a highway prostitute, who killed seven “johns” in Florida, in 1989-1990.  She was executed in October, 2002, after 10 years on death row.  Aileen’s story is a pathetic and all too familiar one: chaotic childhood, sexual abuse, on her own since age 13, selling sex to survive, hard drinking, brazen, suicidal and alone.  The film is well crafted, with excellent pacing, photography and story telling, a gem of a debut effort by writer-director Jenkins.  But what makes this film most memorable is the performance of Charlize Theron as Wuornos.  It is absolutely one of the most stunning turns by any actress that I can recall.  Theron until now has distinguished herself primarily as a gorgeous young woman, exquisite eye candy, with passable, though unplumbed, acting talent, poised somewhere on the cusp between starlet and star.  I had seen her in several small roles: for Woody Allen in Celebrity and Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and most recently in The Italian Job. 

None of these performances prepared me for her personification of Wuornos here.  Much has already been written about this: there’s a prominent feature article, for example, in our newspaper just this morning (“The Oregonian”, January 13, 2004) about her work in Monster.  We all know by now that she gained 30 pounds for the part (think of that much extra weight on a young actress’s frame, even someone as tall as Theron, who’s 5’ 9”…we’re not talking about Robert DeNiro preparing to play Jake LaMotta). Photos of Wuornos next to Theron (in role, with makeup requiring 90 minutes of prep time daily during the shoot) in newspaper articles show the uncanny similarities in their looks. 

But that’s not the half of it.  It is the totality of Theron’s acting that sweeps one away: her shambling gait and gangling gestures, the cocking of her head variously, the constant screwed up movements of her mouth and chin when she’s feeling some interior pain.  Her raw speech, her hair trigger temper, her grandiosity, her deep capacities for outrage, tenderness and love.  Though I am no fan of Christina Ricci, I also think that she does a good job here as Selby, a character loosely based on an actual lover of Wuornos's.  Selby is an immature, self absorbed, passive-dependent, manipulative little naïf whom Lee attaches herself to, a fatal attraction that is at the ironic core of this story. 

This relationship and its consequences make a fascinating psychodynamic motif.  Lee, to invoke Kris Kristofferson’s marvelous lyric, is “…a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction…”  The title “monster” has two meanings.  Her rampage of murders, though understandable in light of the violence repeatedly perpetrated upon her, is monstrous.  But she also tells us in a voiceover about her fascination as a youngster with a giant ferris wheel called “The Monster.”  She was also afraid of it, and when she got a chance to ride, she reacted with fear, nausea and vomiting.  She’s telling us that within her, underneath all the bravada, there is a terrified little girl, given to longings for things she cannot trust, vulnerable, hungry for love.  It is Theron’s capacity to embody both the toughness and the fragility of Lee’s complex character that gives her performance such stature.  She wins our sympathies even as her behavior sometimes repels us.

Lee’s neediness misguides her judgment about Selby.  Lee thinks her own hunger for love is matched by Selby’s.  It isn’t.  It can’t be.  Lee’s trust in Selby’s love is based on projective identification, on an illusion: Selby is not capable of love, not at her age, not when her personality is so unformed.  Selby is dubious from the getgo, and the tenuous bond she is able to establish soon starts to fray as she catches on that Lee may be involving them both in an unsavory spiral of serious crimes.  Selby grows more frightened the deeper the mess becomes – a vicious cycle spinning out of control – and she deepens the problems further by desperately escalating her demands that Lee do something more to rescue them.  

When Selby finally recoils, it is more a matter of understandable self protection a betrayal of love.  She finally sees that she's gotten in way over her head.  And much as our sympathies lie not with her but with Lee, how can one argue against Selby’s horrified withdrawal?  How do you throw in for life with a lover who kills for the rent money?   What would you do in her place?   For her part, Aileen lets down her guard, she chances a ride on the metaphorical ferris wheel of intimacy, she allows herself to experience tenderness in what she hopes will be a safe, requited love relationship.  And once she does open her heart, she can no longer tolerate being abused by the johns she continues to hustle.  That’s when the killings begin. For more on this film, see my article, "A Ride on the Ferris Wheel." For more on Aileen Wuornos, see my review of the biopic, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. Grade: A- (01/04)

MONSTER'S BALL (Marc Forster, US, 2001). THEMES: INTERGENERATIONAL FAMILY CONFLICT; IMPACT OF SUICIDE IN FAMILY; CRISIS BRINGS TWO PEOPLE TOGETHER WHO SUPPORT EACH OTHER. SPOILER ALERT! Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) follows in his hardbitten father's (Peter Boyle) footsteps as a death row corrections officer at the state prison near a small rural Georgia town. Hank's son, Sonny (Heath Ledger) does the same. An execution occurs. It is Sonny's first, and he has a disturbed visceral response, which Hank and his father label as a sign of weakness. Long simmering alienation between Hank and Sonny erupts, and Sonny kills himself. Hank is transformed by the impact of this event, even to the point that he resigns from his job. Leticia (Halle Berry) is the ex-wife of the man recently executed. As if this were not enough, she further suffers the accidental death of her son. This occurs under conditions that bring her into chance contact with Hank.

They gradually move toward one another, two desperate and needy people who each have no one else to turn to but one another. Berry, Thornton and Boyle are excellent. Berry's range of expression is immense and unerring. The story unfolds quietly, matter-of-factly. Its ending, leaving us with wonder about what the future holds for this unlikely couple, sets the right note of final ambiguity. (The Ball, according to what Hank describes to Sonny in the film, is the name given to a party held by the corrections officers who participate in an execution, held the evening before. But Roger Ebert says it originated in old England as a reference to a condemned man's last night on earth.) Grade: B+ (04/02)

MOONLIGHT MILE  (Brad Silberling, US, 2002).  THEME: BEREAVEMENT.  An underappreciated film loosely based on the true story of a Portland family.  As the film opens it is 3 days since a crazed man shot and killed Diana at a local coffee shop, while attempting to shoot his estranged wife, a waitress there.  We immediately meet Diana’s fiancé, Joe (Jake Gyllenhaal) and her parents, JoJo, a writer (Susan Sarandon) and Ben, a real estate dealer (Dustin Hoffman), as they dress for the funeral.   We then follow these three people over the next few hours and days, then over subsequent weeks and months (one of the fine aspects of this film is how its pacing of time shifts from slower to faster as the film unfolds).  Joe and Diana had planned to marry and settle here in her hometown.  The wedding invitations had already gone out.  Joe was to join Ben in business.  This film shares some features in common with two other excellent recent films about bereavement, In the Bedroom (both have a subtext of violent death and the desire for revenge against the killer) and The Son’s Room (both reflect on the process of healing or renewal after loss). 

But here, more importantly, the focus is on the contradictory nature of grief and the absurd manner in which friends blurt out inanities in their well intended but useless efforts to offer emotional support.  Death and loss are awkward events that can evoke powerful yet paradoxical and convoluted emotional responses, and it is the special strength of this movie that it deals with these complexities in a fresh and honest manner.  And the story line compounds the twists and turns that demand an honest accounting.  Telling aspects in Diana’s relationships to the three survivors are gradually revealed.  And there’s more. 

Silberling drew this story from personal experience.  His fiancée, an actress, was killed by a fan in 1989.  He grew close to her parents in the following years.  Besides a story deeply anchored in honesty and psychological realism, including many amusing little details of daily life, this film is made outstanding by uniformly first rate acting (all three principals as well as Holly Hunter and Ellen Pompeo).  Some critics feel that the greater gravitas of In the Bedroom made that a superior film.  I disagree.  The more paradoxical themes explored here, with a light side set against the dark, is more real.  Roger Ebert gets the last word:  “Death is the ultimate rebuke to good manners…this film has the freedom to feel contradictory things.  It is sentimental but feels free to offend….it is analytical but then surrenders to the illogic of its characters….it is about grief but permits laughter…(this film shows the truth that in our grief) sometimes we laugh, that we may not cry.”  For more on this and related films, see my article, "Rooms in the House of Grief." Grade: A- (12/02)

THE MORNING AFTER (Sidney Lumet, US, 1986) THEME: ALCOHOLIC ACTRESS. A washed up, alcoholic, Hollywood film actress becomes enmeshed in a murder she didn’t commit. A former cop comes to her rescue. You’d think that, given a cast of Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges and Raul Julia, led by a director like Lumet, this would be at least a fairly good film. Guess again: it’s close to being a turkey. If you want to see a solid portrayal of an alcoholic actress, forget this one and look up Susan Hayward playing Lillian Roth in the 1955 film based on Roth’s memoir of the same name, I’ll Cry Tomorrow. It’s hard to believe that Ms. Fonda received her seventh Oscar nomination for her quite ordinary performance here. Says a lot more about political perseveration in the Academy than it does about their judgment of acting. Grade: C (11/05)

MORS ELLING (Mother’s Elling) (Eva Isaksen, Norway, 2003, 78 m.). THEMES: OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER (OCPD). A sequel in the worst sense to the hilarious 2001 film, Elling. The star (Per Christian Ellefsen, as the obsessive, mincing, irritable, aging bachelor and mama’s boy, Elling) and the screenwriter are the same as for the first film, but everyone else – the rest of the cast, director, DP, editor and production designer – are a different bunch from those that made the earlier film. In Elling, two psychiatrically institutionalized men were outplaced to share a state sponsored apartment in the community. (The 40-something year old Elling had been admitted after his mother’s death.) The humorous core of Elling was the odd couple relationship between the agoraphobic, enervated, prissy Elling and his apartment roommate Kjell, an oafish but kindly, fearless, and sex crazed virgin. Their escapades were full of fun, and the more sober subtext of naifs aiding one another to get along in the larger world was as tender as it was satirical.

Mors Elling is a “prequel.” It is set at a time not long before Elling, when the title character and his mother still lived together. Mom is properly concerned that after she passes, Elling might not be able to fend for himself. She decides the best thing is to arrange a trip abroad, on a group tour to Majorca, to help desensitize Elling to being out and about in public and enhance his coping skills. Of course he predictably resists the idea, then goes along, but finds fault in every instance of their adventures. The humor - including Elling’s tirade when he and Mom are given a king bed to share at the hotel (ponderously protesting the idea that these people obviously expect him to have sex with her) - is forced, hamhanded. There is no real chemistry of any sort between Mom and Elling. Without a character like Kjell to play against, Elling becomes tiresome to watch, not fun. Too bad. Grade: C (In Norwegian) (11/05)

MORVERN CALLAR (Lynne Ramsay, UK, 2002). THEMES: UNUSUAL, FREE SPIRIT PERSONALITY AND EQUALLY UNUSUAL BEREAVEMENT RESPONSES. SPOILER ALERT! I had read nothing about this film beforehand. Curious title, I thought: sounds like someplace or someone from a Harry Potter fable. Then, in the first minutes of the film, when a young woman goes partying, leaving behind her suicided mate’s nude body on the floor of their flat, basking in the blinking lights of a Christmas tree, I thought, Oh dear, another dark, dismal druggie-trash-Britflick.

Then I noticed that the eponymous woman was being played by Samantha Morton, and that neither she nor anyone else was saying much.  I thought about the Morton performances I’d previously witnessed. Let's see...there was Sean Penn’s mute girlfriend in Sweet and Lowdown. And then the all but voiceless lead Pre-cog in Minority Report. In one sense the notion of a reprised mute Morton came as a relief, for everyone in this film speaks working class Glaswegian and, unlike the Glasgow-set films of Ken Loach, My Name Is Joe and Sweet Sixteen, this one carelessly neglected to provide subtitles (I think I got about 30% of the words). And a Morton zombie turn here would, of course, be fitting for a bereavement film. We've had a run of those lately.

The slow early pace of the film does express Morvern's grief. It seems clear that she loved her deceased mate, Jim. Morvern finally disposes of him, in an unconventional fashion, submits his newly finished draft first novel to a publisher (claiming that she is its author), and steps up her tempo of partying with best pal Lanna, possibly to fight depression.  OK, so now we’ve got a 20something party flick. Good, at least that’s less depressing than heroin or grief. But even in the party scenes, there are times when Morvern seems to disconnect, the camera finding her alone, staring off, pensive.

Still searching for relief, Morvern pulls some dough out of Jim’s and her joint savings account (money that his final note designated for his funeral, had there been one) and suggests she treat Lanna to a jaunt in Spain. Off they go. Now we’ve got a road movie. There’s a lot of boogeying, on the dance floor and in bed, with vacationing guys. And a trip into the mountains, the taxi driven by a dazzling gypsy (the actor’s name is El Carrette, whose leering countenance reminded me of Ray Charles).  Ultimately Morvern leaves a pouty Lanna behind in the Spanish backcountry, and after that M. seems more able to surmount her grief, a movement made easier when good news arrives from the publisher.

She and Lanna separately return home to old routines. But Morvern has changed; she feels restive. Now we sound a coming-of-age theme. Whereas Lanna is content to stay put in their small seaside hometown, because everyone she knows is there, Morvern wants her horizons to expand. Luckily for her, she’s got big bucks in her pocket, and no one has come calling to inquire about Jim’s disappearance. At the end she moves on into a larger world of possibilities.

This film, as you can see, resists easy pigeonholing: it refuses to stay put in any one genre. It is full of ambiguity and flux, and maybe that’s the point: the film is amorphous and lacking in a secure structure just as Morvern and many other young adults perhaps feel about themselves and their lives. Morton is quite convincing in showing movement of her character, gradually and believably emerging from her shell of humdrum living complicated by bereavement. Morvern is a curious character study. She’s got spunk and independence and is capable of experiencing love and loss. Yet she seems rootless and amoral, though perhaps no more so than many of her contemporary age mates. I think she also has more than a touch of larceny in her heart. What about Jim’s dear old mum back in Glasgow? She might have wanted to know what had happened to her Jimmie, innit. And couldn’t she have used a few extra quid from the book royalties to ease the hardship of her final years? Yeah, I know, Jim’s family ties are not established in the film, but, still, think about it. And whatever happened to the idea of honoring the deceased wishes for funeral and burial arrangements?  

Angela, afilm friend who is vastly closer than I to Morvern’s gender and age, adds the perspective that Morvern had every right to be deeply angered by Jim’s suicide. What a Christmas present, after all! Angela sees a quiet anger in Morvern’s brooding. I think this slant does help illuminate some of Morvern's conduct. Anger could serve as a motive for Morvern to claim Jim’s novel as her own – he can take himself away from her but not the book, by damn - and helps account for her chosen method of disposing of his body. Grade: B+ (02/03)

THE MOTHER (Roger Michell, UK, 2004) THEME: BEREAVEMENT; CONFLICTED MOTHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP. SPOILER ALERT! Unusual story of a woman’s bereavement. May’s (Anne Reid) husband of many years dies shortly after the film opens, having established the fact that she has for a lifetime devoted herself to caring for this man and raising her two children, Paula and Bobby. Once her husband passes, May, in her late 60s, seems lost, numb, aimless, unable to return to her suburban house. All of this seems predictable: normal aspects of the early shock of grief. She goes into the city (London) to stay with Paula, a single mom with unfulfilled pretensions of becoming a writer. Various themes unfold. Neither Paula nor Bobby, a busy fellow with a busy wife and two kids, really have time for Mom. They don’t know what to do with her. Again, no surprises here.

Gradually we learn more. In a creative writing class run by Paula, May for the first time puts to paper the dreadful experience she recalls of feeling her life ruined by the drudgery of homemaking. She even speaks of feeling suicidal on occasion in earlier years. We also learn that Paula is a deeply neurotic woman who blames her shortcomings on the lack she felt of May’s love and support. May is nothing if not matter of fact, unsentimental. It is easy to believe that she would have wanted Paula to stand on her own two feet, and that the dependent Paula would have reacted to this form of supportive love as no love at all. Matters take a more convoluted turn involving Paula’s married on-again, off-again lover, Darren (Daniel Craig), a house remodeler who’s also building a conservatory addition on Bobby’s house. Paula asks May to visit him on the job at Bobby’s, to discover his intentions and report back.

May does so and takes a liking to Darren, a man half her age, serving him lunches and snacks on the job. They seem to enjoy each other’s company, and end up making love, at May’s bidding. This continues, perhaps for weeks. At the same time Darren and Paula continue to meet, though it’s not going well. Paula, clueless about Darren’s involvement with her mother, tries to fix May up with an older man in the writing group. They have sex one evening and it is a horrid experience for May, quite opposite to the satisfaction she finds with Darren. Darren tells May he needs time out, if only he could get off the treadmill of work and bill paying for six months.

May offers to finance just such a sojourn: they will go away together. These precarious circumstances cannot stand, of course. Paula and Bobby discover in May’s sketchbook several drawings of sexual encounters that can refer to nobody other than Darren and May. In a fury, Paula confronts her mother and hits her. Also in a rage while high on cocaine, Darren makes it clear to May that he wants the money she is willing to use for their getaway, but has no intention of going anywhere with her. May is defeated, crushed, of course. In the final scenes, obviously superfluous now, standing on the outside observing the busy activities of everyone else – Bobby and his family, Darren, Paula - May retreats, goes home to her house. But she doesn’t stay. She packs a bag and, in the final scene, is walking away from the house, neither confident nor broken.

This film has received high marks from many critics and I’m not sure why. May obviously and justifiably yearns for fulfillment (sexual, artistic, companionate) in widowhood that she was unable to find earlier in life. And sexual acting out during bereavement is common. But May is also portrayed as a realistic and intelligent woman. She may desperately want something more in her last years, but she doesn’t seem to be emotionally fragile or lacking in self control, isn't hitting the bottle, and so on. It’s hard to see how she could exercise such poor judgment in getting mixed up with Darren. Or even in leaving her sketchbook around for the others to see. Darren, for his part, seems to be a decent, good hearted person early on (besides his kindly demeanor, we’re told that the reason he will not leave his wife is that he so much dotes on the couple’s 6 year old autistic son). For him to turn out to be so mean spirited and selfish, qualities perhaps evoked by his cocaine use but not caused by it, is surprising, unexpected. Perhaps that’s the most important thing to be said for this film: it is full of unexpected turns, whether realistic or not. Film critics understandably suffer from the boredom induced by seeing hundreds of films set to familiar formulas. It is not uncommon for a movie to get high marks just because it deviates from established patterns. I think that’s the case here. Grade: B (10/04)

MR. DEATH: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (Errol Morris, US, 2000). THEMES: UNUSUAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, WITH OBSESSIVE FEATURES; CAPITAL PUNISHMENT; ANTISEMITISM; MORAL DANGERS IN HOLDING RIGID CONVICTIONS. Morris keeps getting better as a filmmaker, and nothing he's done so far is more important than this extraordinary study of the human capacity to hold blindly to convictions, to cherished beliefs, in the face of all the available facts and logic. Here once again, as in Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, Morris discovers and interviews a person with a truly weird occupation. Fred Leuchter found a niche no one was filling: designing execution machines for state prisons that work reliably, safely, and, if you'll pardon the oxymoron, humanely, i.e., to reduce suffering of the executee during the execution procedure. The first half of the film chronicles the development of this unusual lifework. Leuchter grew up in the shadow of such a prison, in Massachusetts, where his father worked as a guard. As a child he once sat in the prison's electric chair and explored death row cells where, among others, Sacco and Vanzetti had been housed. He learned pickpocketing skills from inmates.

Leuchter is nothing if not impassioned - he shows in many ways a tendency to commit himself headlong to deep involvement in anything he tries, whether or not it is in his best interests. He drinks 40 cups of coffee a day and smokes 6 packs of cigarettes. He grew up believing in capital punishment. But from his contact with inmates, he formed the view that prisoners on death row were no different from other people, and deserved not to suffer while being executed. Hence his occupation, motivated it seems by a peculiar innocent humanity. But, as Leuchter himself is the first to admit, the fact that he became proficient in designing one form of machine (electric chairs) provided no guarantee that he could design machines operating on very different principles (lethal injection machines, gas chambers, lynching platforms). Yet he was recruited to design all of these by officials in several states, by default really, since there were no other experts to consult.

By the same logic, there is no reason to expect that this untrained and uncredentialed man, lacking licensure in engineering and having had no formal training in chemistry or chemical analysis, or forensic science, could act competently as an expert witness to determine scientifically whether people were gassed at Nazi concentration camps, simply because he had consulted on the design of a prison gas chamber or two. But that is exactly what he agreed to become, in a career turn that has been his undoing. This story makes up the second half of Morris's film. Ernst Zundel, a German national living in Canada and an outspoken Holocaust revisionist, was indicted under an intriguing Canadian law, an exception to free speech, which holds that it is a felony to publish material the goal of which is to cause harm to a racial or ethnic minority. In tracts denying the fact of the Holocaust, Zundel had violated this law, the government contended. And Zundel's defense lawyers sent for Leuchter, hoping he could somehow disprove that gas was used in the camps, that they were not death camps but rather slave labor camps, an assertion they thought might let Zundel off the hook.

Leuchter fairly jumped at the chance, ironically spending his honeymoon in 1989 surreptitiously analyzing the design of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and chipping away material from their crumbling walls, defacing the ruins while illegally collecting these specimen to have them later tested for cyanide. As shown later, he hadn't the slightest idea what he was doing. He didn't know the most rudimentary facts about cyanide, for example, that it only penetrates stone to a thickness of 10 microns, far more shallow than the diameter of a human hair, so that his deeply chipped, pulverized rock samples could not possibly test positive. Nor did he review any of the Nazi archival material that alludes to cyanide gas procured for the camps. His report offered in testimony at the Kundel trial was thoroughly discredited, and Kundel was found guilty. But this did not stop Leuchter from becoming a darling of the Holocaust revisionist lecture circuit worldwide, a status in which he basked. However, he became labeled as an antisemitic at home, and, one thing leading to another, he lost work in his execution machine trade, and subsequently lost his home, money and wife, in a sad downward spiral of events which apparently is not over yet.

How could anyone have had Leuchter's audacity to suppose that such an endeavor as his Auschwitz misadventure was necessary or justified? How could he brazenly and knowingly deface the ruins of the chambers at Auschwitz, a protected national monument? How could he decide, once and for all, while in Poland, that he was absolutely correct in assuming that people were never gassed there by the Nazis, a conviction that has never yielded to the facts (the historical record, chemical scientific expertise) presented at Kundel's trial and even in this film (which Leuchter has watched and said he enjoyed). Robert Jan van Pelt, a Holocaust historian, calls Leuchter "...an innocent. An innocent simpleton." It is easy to see him as a sort of sad and uninsightful, if monstrous, fellow all right. But Morris takes some pains not to so categorize him. Indeed, one of the strengths of this film is its nonjudgmental, balanced account that, if anything, gives Leuchter far more "air time" to exposit his perspective than his detractors are given. Of course Morris must know full well that his audiences will see the monstrous side of Leuchter without the need for props: Morris simply gives Leuchter enough rope to hang himself. Painlessly.

Apart from its content, it should be noted that this film shows much evidence of technical genius. It is one of the most artistically crafted documentaries I have ever seen. The opening and closing credit sequences are stunning: arcing electrical charges permeate a dark blue black scene as a man ascends through nearly open space in an elevator shaped like a giant birdcage. Early on we get to know Leuchter glimpsing part of his face surreally in a car's rear view mirror. Chamber music sets a sweetly haunting counterpoint to the macabre content of the film. The editing is superb, seamless, often surprising. When Leuchter goes to Poland in 1989, the shots from the cockpit of the plane he takes are from Leni Riefenstahl's 1934 footage from a plane carrying Hitler to Nuremberg (from her film Triumph of the Will). This inventiveness, this mixing of artifice with fact, is a method of seeking what Werner Herzog calls "ecstatic truth" - a transcendental truth about human nature that goes beyond the biographical facts of one man's life. (Herzog, incidentally, considers Morris one of the finest documentarians around, a “true source of joy.”)

It has been said that this film is about “stupidity'” and our “cult of expertise.” But I think the issues here cut broader and deeper than these. Morris's purpose, by telling us the story of Fred Leuchter, is to show us an important and very worrisome thing about all of us: this tendency to hold onto our convictions at all costs. Like every problematic facet of human nature, there is enormous potential for both good and evil in this tendency. We speak of a person having the "courage of their convictions" as a positive virtue and, under certain circumstances, even as an act of heroism. In this film, as is more commonly the case with regard to convictions about politics, religion or ethnic/racial matters, we are confronted with the dark side of our reluctance to be swayed by valid information and good sense. Grade: A+ (02/00)

MR. JONES  (Mike Figgis, US, 1993).  THEMES: BIPOLAR I (MANIC DEPRESSIVE) DISORDER; ETHICAL TRANSGRESSIONS IN PSYCHIATRIST-PATIENT RELATIONSHIPS.  Richard Gere plays Mr. Jones, a man with bipolar disorder, and does it very well indeed.  Especially good are his states of manic elation, when he is infectiously euphoric, gabby, hypersexual, intrusive, and unafraid of a fight.  He lands in the hospital when manic, after causing a fracas at his workplace.  Later he is admitted again when he is suicidally depressed.  He is less convincing when depressed.  He moves too quickly between a dejected, emotionally impoverished, slowed down mental state and sudden bursts of energetic behavior.  But then mixed states in which manic and depressive symptoms are found side by side do occur in this disorder. Also noteworthy is Mr. Jones’s penchant for manipulation and dissemblance, qualities also found not uncommonly in persons with bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, a rather tawdry romantic subtext - in which his psychiatrist, Dr. Libbie Bowen (Lena Olin), falls for Mr. Jones - is tacked on to this story.  Dr. Bowen starts crossing the professional line almost at first meeting, when she shouts angrily at Jones, then drives him around town in a chummy manner.  You can tell at a glance where this relationship is headed, and it’s more toward bed than couch.  This unethical, cheesy relationship is out of tune with the intelligent take on bipolar disorder rendered by Mr. Gere, who researched the role by spending some time with psychiatric patients.  Grades:  Drama: B-; clinical depiction of bipolar disorder: A- (06/03)

MRS. DALLOWAY (Marleen Gorris, Netherlands/UK, 1997). THEMES: PTSD (POST-COMBAT PSYCHOTIC DEPRESSION); WOMEN’S ISSUES. Dear, dear. How disappointing this film is, viewed just after reading Woolf’s novel. The screenplay has erased nearly all the fine edge of Woolf’s incisive characterizations. The men are all less woeful, the women all less strong, and one of the weakest women – Lady Bradshaw - here is as overbearing and menacing as her husband was made out to be in the novel, while Sir William is a sort of pussycat. In this film, it is not Lady Bruton who is closeted with the Prime Minister during Clarissa’s party, but rather it is Richard Dalloway who gets the private audience, on Lady Bruton’s behalf.

The casting isn’t altogether bad. Michael Kitchen could have been quite good as the failed, hopelessly dependent Peter Walsh, but the lines he is given by screenwriter Atkins do not reveal the enormity of his spinelessness. Nor are Richard’s naivete and banal simplicity made clear. Rupert Graves is adequate as the hapless, psychotically depressed Septimus. No problems there. And Lena Headey is fine as the young Sally Seton. But Clarissa’s power and her complexity are missed entirely here, both in her younger and older personas. She’s made out to be a frivolous party animal. Nevertheless, both Natascha McElhone (the younger Clarissa) and Vanessa Redgrave (the older) do non-verbally convey the poise and demeanor of the novel’s Clarissa quite well. In the end, what we have here is “Mrs. Dalloway” lite; it’s a sort of beautifully filmed bore of a movie. In The Hours, we can provisionally accuse Stephen Daldry and David Hare, or their producers, of creeping male chauvinism when they substitute suffering for stamina in their female characters. But Mrs. Dalloway was made by women! What’s their excuse for misrepresenting Woolf’s vision of the strong women in her novel? Grade: B (06/03)

MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT (Dan Ireland, UK, 2005, 108 m.). THEMES: GERIATICS: COPING WITH WIDOWHOOD & LONELINESS; SITCOM ON RESIDENTIAL LIVING. Dame Joan Plowright plays an elderly, recently widowed woman who attempts to cope with her grief and loneliness by moving into a residential hotel in west central London. She intends this as an extended fling, the outcome of which is uncertain to her, providing some sense of adventure, which is really what she’s after. How unlike the bleak retrenchment in monotonously familiar surroundings that so many people in her circumstances settle for, and thus how admirable an idea. To her dismay, the hotel is quite rundown and inhabited by other older persons each living in a rut all their own.

When Mrs. Palfrey’s own vacuous grandson fails to come visit, chance presents her with a proxy, a compliant young writer, played by newcomer Rupert Friend, who strikes a bargain with Mrs. Palfrey, agreeing to act the part of her grandson and thus satisfy the curiosity of the other residents, in return for which he asks to conduct interviews of her to help him write a book. Mr. Friend is a good sport about his role, but he is required to wear wretchedly nerdy attire and act too preciously sweet, which dooms his relationship with Mrs. Palfrey to a cloying caricature.

Ms. Plowright herself is splendidly dignified, deadpan when called for, and believable throughout. At age 75, when the film was made, she had been suffering from severe glaucoma for years, couldn’t read the script without a magnifying lens, and had limited shooting hours imposed by her physician. Nevertheless, she was an inspired performer from whom the director, Portlander Dan Ireland, learned a lot, he told us, in a Q & A that followed tonight’s screening.

Her presence as the lead also attracted several marvelous British character actors to work on the film. Among the other hotel residents are actor Robert Lang, 70, a favorite of Ms. Plowright’s late husband, Sir Laurence Olivier, who plays a would be suitor (he died two weeks after the shoot); Anna Massey, 67, actor Raymond Massey’s daughter, as a controlling busybody; and Marcia Warren, recipient of several recent London theater awards, as a self-effacing, timid soul.

They’re all terrific, but even better is Timothy Bateson, at 78 the oldest actor on the set, who plays the hunkering, taciturn bellman. He’s had 141 roles spanning a 57 year film career, but I can’t imagine that he was ever better than he is here, stealing scenes with his huge repertoire of grunts and grimaces – I really can’t recall that he spoke a word of actual English. Dame Joan told Ireland that Bateson has always had this gift, not infrequently a cause of frustration for other actors who might have preferred an audience to watch them instead.

Ireland told us that the screenplay was the very first ever written by an 85 year old woman, Ruth Sacks. It’s based on a 1973 novel by Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress) who was dying of cancer at the time, no doubt contributing to a decidedly more cynical slant than the screenplay gives. The ensemble of aging actors, with Dame Joan at their center, is the reason to see this film. The story, a geriatric sitcom at one level, is also a telling commentary on the isolation of many elders, even when sharing the same residence and meals. Grade: B (03/06).

MY ARCHITECT: A SON’S JOURNEY (Nathaniel Kahn, US, 2003). THEMES: FAMILY ESTRANGEMENT AND RECONCILIATION; COMPLEX PERSONALITIES; CREATIVE GENIUS. The architect, Louis Kahn, was fond of saying that “…the world never needed Beethoven’s 5th Symphony until he created it; now we can’t live without it.” A simple statement, but one that helps immensely to understand Kahn’s vision, his deep belief in the transcendent significance and power of monumental artistic creations, massive works that are grounded in classical form and spirit. This film is a brilliantly realized documentary about Kahn and the people most touched by this forceful, mysterious man.

Kahn's son, Nathaniel, a man with a handful of modest screenwriting and acting credits until now, manages here in his filmmaking debut to create a monumental work of his own, weaving a rich tapestry of three threads: a study of the work of a creative genius, an intimate biography of a complex man, and the story of a son’s yearnings to discover a father he hardly knew, all of this done 25 years after Kahn’s precipitous death. There are interviews with several major architects who knew Kahn well, some of his associates, and members of his three separate and concurrent families. Nathaniel Kahn must be a delightful fellow to chat with, because the interview material he shares is incredibly full and candid, so revealing of Louis Kahn and of the individuals who speak about him.

The music – at one point boldly juxtaposing the choral movement from Beethoven’s 9 th Symphony alongside a ballad sung by Neil Young – and the photography are outstanding acts of artistry in themselves. The overall outcome is a deeply edifying, inspirational tribute to Kahn, one in which subjectivity accents - harmonizes with - the objective record. The film is rendered no less spiritually and aesthetically moving because it is as frank about Kahn’s shortcomings as it is laudatory about his vision and achievements. If you value the transcendental possibilities of artistic works, or are intrigued by the paradoxes of human nature, don’t miss this film. It swells the heart. Grade: A (02/04)

MY BEST FIEND (Werner Herzog, Germany, 1999). THEMES: SEVERE BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER; INTERDEPENDENT RELATIONSHIP. Herzog's chronicle of his incredible love-hate relationship with Klaus Kinski. It began when Herzog was 13, and Kinski, then a young actor, lived across the wall from Herzog's family (his siblings and single mother) in a run down Mⁿnich boarding house. Kinski's demonic paroxysms of violent rage are well documented here, as are his occasional capacity for tenderness and his remarkable acting talents. My diagnoses: Herzog: obsessed with the impossible (actors, filming locations) but otherwise normal; Kinski: severe borderline personality disorder, extremely unpredictable, narcissistic, even capable of brief periods of psychotic behavior, in a person with extraordinary acting talent. This is not the best crafted of documentaries, but I give it my highest grade because it will add a fundamental chapter to the permanent archive of late 20th century cinema history. The films these men made together are stupendous in their ambition and realization (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo). At heart they are utterly Germanic: they epitomize the dark, complex, demonic, obsessively driven national character that we came to know so well in the century just ended. It is far better that these demons are turned to film than to politics. (In German with English dubbing by Herzog, who narrates.) Grade: A+ (02/00)

MY FAVORITE SEASON  (Andre Techine, France, 1997)  THEME: SIBLING INCEST.