Weekly round-up

>> A terrible tearjerker, purloined art, master debaters and chilling climate change

ART ATTACK: The Rape of Europa

by HILLARY BRENHOUSE,
MALCOLM FRASER and
MATTHEW HAYS

P.S. I Love You

Shortly before watching this painful tearjerker, I read in an advice column that it’s a critic’s responsibility to sit through the works of art he’s reviewing in their entirety. This reminder of my professional obligations was crucial in keeping my seat against my instincts and judgement, along with the barely comforting thought: “I’m seeing this so that other people don’t have to.”

Hilary Swank plays a woman whose lovably roguish Irish husband (Gerard Butler) dies, but not before arranging to send her inspirational letters over the subsequent year. To the dismay of her friends (Gina Gershon and Lisa Kudrow), her mom (Kathy Bates) and a handsome suitor (Harry Connick Jr.), the letters prevent her from letting go and moving on, leaving her morose as she again and again flashes back to her cloyingly romantic marriage.

Writer/director Richard LaGravenese cut his teeth writing other weepies like The Mirror Has Two Faces, The Bridges of Madison County and The Horse Whisperer, and also directed another recent Swank atrocity, Freedom Writers. Nothing could excuse his culpability in assembling this overlong, poorly constructed monstrosity, replete with clichés, horrible music and agonizingly wooden and underdeveloped characters. When comic relief from a Friends veteran is by far the highlight of a film, that’s a really bad sign. Swank has a few fleeting moments of vague likeability, but clearly her quality control judgement has severely malfunctioned; she would have to win five more Oscars to make up for this abomination. (MF)

The Rape of Europa

Be sure to cast your cynicism aside about yet another Holocaust-related documentary, because The Rape of Europa—based on the book of the same name—is a tremendously fascinating look at another bizarre dimension of the Third Reich. It’s a stunning examination of Hitler’s attitudes towards art and culture, showing us, in meticulous detail, what the Nazis plundered and destroyed. It’s shocking just how much damage was done, with Russian, Polish, French and Austrian works robbed from their owners; some have been returned, some still haven’t shown up.

These robberies went hand in hand with the genocide, with the Nazis furnishing their own homes and collections with art that had been pinched from Jews as they were trotted off to the ovens. While most films on this subject have focused, understandably, on the human losses, The Rape of Europa presents another telling side to WWII, an indication that attitudes towards life and great art inform each other in complex ways.

Amid the horrors are acts of clever bravery. The French were particularly careful in smuggling artworks out of Paris and into safe hiding places. One woman recalls the hiding place her parents secured for the Mona Lisa in a country estate. It’s a welcome moment of triumph in an often devastating movie. Anyone interested in history and/or art must see this film. (MH)

The Great Debaters

Denzel Washington has had some great moments in front of the camera; as a director, he seems to have a preference for the inspirational true story, with all the pitfalls that entails. Like his directorial debut Antwone Fisher, this drama is alternately inspiring and cloying, depending on your tastes and mood.

Washington also stars as Melvin B. Tolson, a small town 1930s Texas teacher who mentors an all-black debating club. The members are stock archetypes: Henry (Nate Parker) is a hot-headed troublemaker; Samantha (Jurnee Smollett) is an angelic voice of reason; and James (Denzel Whitaker) is a soft-spoken young researcher, full of promise but too shy to take his place onstage.

The team starts tearing up the debate circuit, but has to contend with interpersonal drama, institutional racism and prejudice against Tolson’s socialist beliefs. Washington as a director is, shall we say, unafraid of convention: he never misses an opportunity to cue swelling strings or to summarize an issue in a flurry of obvious dialogue. There’s a frustrating scene where Forest Whitaker (the younger actor is no relation), as a local doctor, confronts Washington about the wisdom of his social activism. Here are two of the best actors of their generation, but as with the Pacino-De Niro face-off in Michael Mann’s Heat, their screen chemistry is underused.

The young actors give fine performances, but ultimately the film’s good intentions can’t overcome its penchant for clichés. Washington needs to unleash the artistic equivalent of Tolson’s social and political courage. (MF)

Le Dernier continent

COLD COMFORT: Le Dernier Continent

Québécois biologist and filmmaker Jean Lemire brings us another compelling cinematic reminder that we’re skating on progressively thinner ice. Like La Planète Blanche (2006), Lemire’s latest profiles snow-covered critters and the effects of global warming. Only this time, the documentary is as much about the explorers as it is the explored. Le Dernier continent portrays the human journey of an audacious team that submits itself to 430 days of uninterrupted isolation. A crew of scientists, cinematographers and health professionals sail Sedna IV, a vessel fitted with the most recent in technological equipment, to the unwelcoming Antarctic. Once the waters freeze, there is no turning back.

The result is an arresting, albeit longwinded montage of wildlife portraits, melting glaciers and the trials that supplement a self-inflicted prison. The team watches as a bloody seal pup is abandoned by its mother. In the next frame, one of the voyagers chokes back tears over the telephone while he wishes the daughter he’s left behind a happy birthday. You may get antsy as the members of the expedition slowly go stir crazy, but poignant set pieces are well worth the wait. The underwater camerawork is particularly astounding, capturing an enormous billowing jellyfish that glows like neon confetti.

As the group tries to pass the time playing hockey on the brittle expanse of ice that is home, as they battle storms and extended bouts of silence, the temperature rarely dips below minus five. This majestic look at the last continent is, ultimately, a powerful campaign against climate change, testifying to the South Pole’s gradual dissolution whilst it explores the limits of the individual. (HB)

Man in the Chair

This oddball drama is a personal project for writer/director Michael Schroeder, whose previous filmography includes a preponderance of straight-to-video action film sequels. Cameron (Michael Angarano) is a teenage boy in L.A., raised by his mother and her grumpy boyfriend, who spends his days at a run-down movie theatre that shows classic Hollywood films. There he meets Flash (Christopher Plummer), a retired gaffer and embittered alcoholic. The two soon form a bond and embark on a film project with the help of an aging screenwriter (the great M. Emmet Walsh) as well as Plummer’s wacky housemates at a seniors’ home for Hollywood veterans.

Plummer puts in a pretty damn impressive performance, bringing the character to life and inhabiting him with his typical Shakespearean gravitas. Unfortunately, the other actors (Walsh excepted) can’t quite keep up with him, and his bravura turn isn’t enough to redeem the film’s serious flaws. Schroeder’s love of old Hollywood, while obviously heartfelt, leads him to include some anachronisms—as much as I would love it if there were still run-down old theatres that showed classic films all day long, I doubt if there are—as well as discouraging clichés.

Also, for someone with such a love of classic film, he sure uses a lot of shaky slow-motion camera work, which is aesthetically and physically nauseating. It’s hard to fault the film’s good heart, or its attempt to weave in the social issue of elder abuse, but its strong elements fail to add up to a good movie. (MF)

P.S. I Love You, The Rape of Europa,
Le Dernier Continent and Man in the Chair
open this Friday, Dec. 21; The Great
Debaters opens Tuesday, Dec. 25

>> Movie Listings