Tag: Michael Winterbottom

Reel 89: Backstage Adaptations

Hey there! Long time no see!

That’s actually my (Claude) fault. I’d completed post-production on this episode of the show and somehow failed to post it to our host. Fortunately I corrected that a couple of nights ago, so it should already be in your podcast feed. But if you’re catching up here, you have my abject apologies. You’ll also get Episode 90 this weekend, dropping overnight Saturday/Sunday morning.

Today we’re looking at a couple of films that outline the trials and tribulations attached to creating a film based on source material that’s notoriously tough to adapt to film. As a result, the film becomes a story telling us how tough it is to do the adaptation, while simultaneously (sort of) telling us the story itself.

We open with ADAPTATION (2002), directed by Spike Jonze. We have here a terrific ensemble cast, including Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep and several other familiar faces. Cage plays a screenwriter who’s struggling with writing a script based on the real-life book The Orchid Thief. His twin brother shows up and decides that scriptwriting isn’t so tough, maybe he can write one. Hijinks ensue.

ADAPTATION is about the scriptwriting process. But sometimes the script comes together but producing the actual film is…something else again. For that we have TRISTAM SHANDY: A COCK & BULL STORY, from 2005 and directed by Michael Winterbottom.

In this film, Steve Coogan plays an exaggerated version of himself in the title role of the film adaptation of The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman. He’s constantly fighting with another actor, usually about who the real star of the film is. The director doesn’t appear to have a good handle on the source material, and the two people (who coincidentally–or not–have the same first name) who do, are constantly ignored. If you’ve ever watched a film and wondered how it got made, this is the answer.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 

In Episode 90 we go to the ballet, starting with the 1948 film THE RED SHOES, written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Sean and Claude both enjoyed this film despite having different opinions on certain aspects of it. From there we go to 2003’s THE COMPANY, directed by Robert Altman. It covers a season of rehearsal and performances at the Joffrey Ballet. As with any Altman film, you may have a little difficulty following the chaos at first, but once you relax and settle in, you’ll have a great time. Join us, won’t you?

 

The Claim (2000) – Review

Thomas Hardy, who wrote poetry and fiction, wrote detailed stories full of richly drawn characters struggling against society and fate. While they would seem to be the type of novels that could be made into successful movies, that hasn’t always been the case. Director Michael Winterbottom, for example, has made three movie adaptations of Hardy novels. The first one, Jude, a straightforward movie version of Jude the Obscure, had two great performances by Kate Winslet and Rachel Griffiths, but failed to capture how the city it took place in was as much a character in the story as the main character (played by Christopher Eccleston). The most recent one, Trishna, a loose, modern-day version of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which also moved the setting to India, had the opposite problem; it captured the setting perfectly, but suffered from a flat performance by Frieda Pinto in the title role. Only The Claim, Winterbottom’s movie of Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (adapted by Frank Cottrell Boyce), one of my favorite novels ever, comes off well.

Hope (Sarah Polley) and Donald (Wes Bentley).

Winterbottom and Boyce change the character names, and transplant the story from Victorian England to 1867 California during the Gold Rush (though it was shot in Alberta in Canada), but the story is essentially the same. Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan) runs a town called Kingdom Come (the original title of the movie), and has his hand in almost everything that goes on in the town – including the bank, the hotel, and the law – except for a saloon/brothel, though since that’s run by Lucia (Milla Jovovich), his girlfriend, that suits him fine. Plus, he owns a fortune in gold. However, three visitors come to town who prove fateful to him. The first is Donald Daglish (Wes Bentley), a surveyor for the Central Pacific Railroad, and Dillon wants to please Daglish so that the railroad will go through Kingdom Come and bring prosperity to it, rather than to another town. The other two visitors are more worrying to Dillon – Elena (Nastassja Kinski) and her daughter Hope (Sarah Polley). 18 years earlier, Dillon had been married to Elena, and they were poor, but on one drunken night, Dillon sold them in exchange for a gold claim that allowed him to get rich. Now that the two have come back, a guilt-ridden Dillon wants to do right by them – especially since Elena is dying of tuberculosis – but he also wants to make sure none of this gets revealed to anyone else in town. Unfortunately, things don’t work out the way Dillon wants them to.

Lucia (Milla Jovovich).

In addition to Hardy, Winterbottom and Boyce are also evoking Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, in the way this is a western that isn’t about wide-open spaces and individuals determining their own destinies, but about cities, businessmen, and individuals whose destinies are determined by fate. They also have snow and cold in common. In spite of the bleakness of the setting, Winterbottom makes the town feel alive, rather than just a location. I have no idea if this is true, but the extras seem like they’re the same people throughout, rather than different people for each day, and it makes the town seem lived in. In addition to the major characters, there are also interesting supporting characters, such as Bellanger (Julian Richings), one of Daglish’s co-workers at the railroad, and Annie (Shirley Henderson, a Winterbottom regular), the prostitute who falls in love with him. All of this helps to augment the inevitable fate that awaits Dillon. Cinematographer Alwin Kuchler (in the first of two movies he’d shoot with Winterbottom) does a good job of evoking the look of the town as well.

Mullan has a tough job here, as we have to empathize with him despite the awful thing he did, but he never plays for false sympathy, and yet you can see goodness in him, as with the way he treats Lucia when they’re together, and also Elena. He’s also believable as someone in charge. Bentley looks a little too modern to be a 19th century railroad inspector, but he gets into the role, carries an air of authority to him, and also shows his essential good nature. And Polley, as usual, is natural and unaffected. The real surprise here is Jovovich. Best known for the Resident Evil movies, Jovovich has the bawdiness of a madam down pat (a real-life musician, she also sings well), but she also shows vulnerability in the way she reacts when Dillon leaves her for Elena, and in her scenes with Daglish. The Claim was pretty much ignored at the box office, despite the fact a few critics did champion it (as I recall, Richard Roeper put it on his 10 best list for the year), which is too bad, as it works both as a western and an adaptation of Hardy’s novel.

Reel 75: The Western as Allegory

Webster’s (online) Dictionary defines allegory as “the expression by means of fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence.” How’s THAT for an eye-opener?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Wait, isn’t that a metaphor?” No. A metaphor, in its broadest sense, is a symbolic representation of a concept. So while something like “The ship plows through the ocean” is a metaphor, Aesop’s Fables would be an allegory.

Get it? Or have you dozed off already? Well, wake up, because we’ve got a couple of allegorical films for you, and we promise they’ll entertain you. But you knew that already because you’ve seen them and are fully prepared for the spoilers we discuss.

We’ll start with McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), directed by Robert Altman and starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, along with several other actors that will have you saying “Yup, Altman film.” As usual, there’s often many, many things going on in the frame, but you never lose sight of the main action.

In Part 2, we jump to the year 2000 for The Claim, directed by Michael Winterbottom. On the surface, these films couldn’t be more different, and yet they hit many, many of the same notes. And there are specific plot points that are quite similar. Coincidence? Homage? Something else? We’ll leave that for you to decide.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Next time around we’ll be looking at another pair of films that have the same allegory going on, but using the Gangster genre instead. We begin with Thief (1981), directed by Michael Mann. From there we move forward only one year to 1982, and John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday. Join us, won’t you?

 

Reel 48: A Fan’s Eye View

Strap in, kids, this is going to be a long one.

It took forever for Sean and I to get to this particular episode, and both of us have been dying—DYING, I tells ya—to talk about Almost Famous. It may be Sean’s favorite film that doesn’t involve music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s certainly one of the eleven films in my Top Ten. (See, that’s two pokes I took at him, there. I’ll be paying dearly for this soon, I’m sure.)

At any rate, this time around we’re looking at a couple of films where it’s a fan of the music who gets the insider’s view. And that fan is the audience surrogate for much of the action that takes place.

First up is 2000’s Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical love letter to 1970s-era Rock and Roll. It’s got everything you want in a movie: some laughs, some drama, some tension, a little sex (mostly implied), an amazing soundtrack and a genuine feel for the era in which it takes place. We were so anxious to talk about this film that it’s probably the longest segment we’ve ever recorded for one movie.

Likewise, in Part 2 we have 24 Hour Party People, a 2002 film by Michael Winterbottom. In this film we get a peek into a specific slice of the early days of the 1980s New Wave era. Likewise, Winterbottom puts us in the middle of the action and while we’re told outright that some of the events in the film didn’t actually happen the way they’re presented, this has a documentary feel that has you buying every last bit of it. And you already know it wasn’t like that!

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 
Next time around we’re looking at some butt-kicking female thieves. First up is Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon from 2000. Less well-known but still really good is Widows, a Steve McQueen film from 2008 that will grab you quickly and suddenly turn on a dime into a much different story.