Review: Anonymous

Anonymous

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Starring: Rhys Ifans, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sebastian Armesto, Vanessa Redgrave, Rafe Spall, David Thewlis, Joely Richardson, Derek Jacobi

Grade: C+

Whatever our preconceptions about history, it’s easy to take them for granted. When you begin to study the subject you realise that there is rarely a uniform view about anything, and that notions of ‘truth’ are much more murky and uncertain than they appear on the surface. An unlikely purveyor of oppositional theory, Roland Emmerich is more at home with adhering to the expectations of an audience than going against them, but nevertheless helms this tale of fiction’s indubitubly reprised hero William Shakespeare, who has his name on works as iconic as “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Juliet,” but does that categorically mean that he wrote them? Emphatically, Emmerich suggests that he didn’t, and that instead these plays were written by the then-Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere – an accusation which represents one of the many theories as to the identity of the true author.

If all of this sounds like a far-fetched attempt at rewriting the history books, then consider this: RSC stalwarts Derek Jacobi and Vanessa Redgrave both star in “Anonymous” and advocate its claims. Beyond this film there is weight to the discussion, but Emmerich, protective of the mantra that entertainment supercedes debate, opts to forego cultural responsibility and craft a film that flaunts the factional warfare of Elizabethan politics rather than scrutinising the subject at hand. William Shakespeare (Spall) is portrayed as an illiterate, lecherous fool, and De Vere (Ifans) as the nobleman skirting the stigma of the artist’s profession. The Earl produces the plays, using poet Samuel Johnson (Armesto) as a go-between, and relays a left-wing political voice which opposes the royal aides who surround elderly Queen Elizabeth I (Redgrave).

A story littered with scandalous accusations of sex, betrayal, and incest, “Anonymous” is far too overstuffed and, frankly, ridiculous to achieve any rounded view of history. The goals of the film are in allaying facts and providing a gung-ho impression of Elizabethan England as a haven for self-interested charlatans, and as such asserts that the truth may be even stranger than fiction. But it’s self-parodical in its radicalism of history as laden with hateful, preposterous characters and cross-generational romances, integrating soapy melodrama into the narrative without riffing on artistic tropes the way that “Shakespeare in Love” did thirteen years ago. It’s probably the trashiest representation of the era since at least “Mary, Queen of Scots” in 1971, proffering snap political decisions as the catalyst for emotional grandstanding.

While many will scoff at Emmerich’s commercialisation of 16th century life, the film’s sheer audacity as an anti-history lesson, estranged from logic, is one of its key attributes. There are storylines and plot twists in “Anonymous” which defy belief, but watching them unfold is often tremendous fun, with Redgrave in fine form as the frothy, culture-loving monarch, and Ifans statuesque as the haughty, melancholy puppetmaster observing from the sidelines. There’s a great deal of character brought to the film, which likely benefits from shying away from straight-laced drama and a self-important tone. The inevitable problems emerge from interloping figures, cliched subplots, intercutting between timeframes (all of which have plagued Emmerich’s films before) and primarily the framing of the theory as a viable option in the first place. It’s difficult to imagine that anybody watching “Anonymous” would entertain this impression of Shakespeare as anything other than a fictional fancy, since so much within its approach spurns intellectual engagement for other exploits.

For Emmerich, “Anonymous” may have initiated a departure from his usual disaster movie blockbusters, but as a competent cinematic storyteller dependent upon familiar narrative beats and clichés, this isn’t a million miles away from his usual fare. Unfathomably, he has fashioned high-brow into low-brow; turned one of the most prestigious periods for literature into a crowdpleasing piece of frippery about profligates and schemers. It’s a loose cannon of a picture, enjoyably frothing with issues and intrigue, but often clumsily executed and manically curtailed in its final third. “Anonymous” even does its best to destroy the credibility of the argument it's founded upon. But for all of that, and irrespective of whether you view this as the work of a hack, a heathen, or a dillettante, it commands admiration for the gall of the venture alone. The world of the theatre may be shown up for its deception here, but it has rarely felt this alive and well.

Review: Julia (1977)

Julia

Directed by Fred Zinnemann

Starring: Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, Maximillian Schell, Meryl Streep

Grade: B

Fred Zinnemann's "Julia" sure is an odd duck. It's so odd that it doesn't feel like Zinnemann made it at all -- less formal  and glamourous than his Fifties' work, quirky and clunky as if Frank Perry or Jerry Schatzberg were at the helm. It's set during the war but you rarely think of it as a period film, of-the-time in its quadrant of uncertainty and incoherence yet stylistically appealing in its lack of an assured gaze. Based on the memoirs of playwright Lilian Hellman there's a distinct impression that this passage of her history represents but a misty swarm of ideas and feelings within the book, which is a sentiment that's echoed onscreen.

"Julia" is a rare period drama where you have to put in nearly as much as you get out. Lilian and Julia enter the film with a childhood bond that permeates the surface of mere adulation into something more spiritual and undefined, a couple of early sequences dedicated to hints of exposition. Alvin Sargent's script then lurches forward to a fag-chuffing Jane Fonda looking stressed at her typewriter, and a stately Jason Robards as her friend and advisor Dashiel Hammett. Lilian is marooned in her beach house and grasping for inspiration, precluding an outside world which is coming to terms with major political unrest. While Julia participates in resistance projects, Lilian approaches the global situation with her words, thoughts, feelings, and indelible ink.

There are so few passages in which we're told what somebody is thinking or feeling, or made to sympathise with one political cause or another -- even as a fascist-set drama rightly never has to justify lambasting its subject matter. We're making sense of the characters and what they represent, but we aren't following them like puppy dogs. We merely watch while events revolve around them, and observe their fragmented distillation of fear. This isn't a smooth, linear story of arcs and lessons -- it's an oscilloscope of connection-through-disconnection, and a portrait of how one's life isn't so designated and remedial a journey. How we're indecisive, wary, blameful, duly responsible, even as what goes on around us feels so unapproachably abstract. The fate of the writer is perhaps an even bigger burden; what is progress without improvement, enlightenment, and approval? What are we without labels or goals?

At least in terms of dialogue none of the characters fully address these conflicts, and one scene in particular demonstrates how the script doesn't need to preach to transfer its thoughts. Sat in a German bar Lilian eventually makes the gruelling trip to Julia's hideout, where the two discuss what Julia has been doing in their period apart. As is in the scheme of Zinnemann's storytelling there isn't a lot of detailed information, but instead he presents a reunion that speaks volumes without having to cause a commotion. With lesser actors it's difficult to see this five-minute setup providing such a wealth of emotion, but because it's Redgrave and Fonda we get it all. Redgrave in particular has the uncanny ability to provide magnetic presence without appearing at all aware of the camera, and the nature of Julia as unconcerned with anything but her own passioned intentions lets us see her on the otherworldly pedestal Lilian builds for her. 

Zinnemann insists on harking back to one lingering point of recognition: a shot of the sun setting on the sea and an unmanned boat (Kim Ki-Duk-style) in what's probably an overly poignant way of rooting us in Lilian's lost world of the writer. We're often left too entrenched in this pocket of uncertainty that the film lacks a certain level of scope and sense of the period, but it's forever enchanting and deep in maturity. "Julia" is a hotchpotch of unfocused archives amidst one woman's attempts to reconcile herself with a conventional point of meaning. Ultimate accomplishment may inherently elude this film, but bully for those involved that it manages to be as bracing as it is without succumbing to staples of the biographical drama.

A Review of The Whistleblower (Kondracki, 2011)

The Whistleblower

Directed by Larysa Kondracki

Starring: Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn, Vanessa Redgrave, Roxana Condurache, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Monica Bellucci

Grade: C –

Written for Subtitled Online:

Larysa Kondracki’s issue-driven “The Whistleblower” emerges at an opportune time to raise public awareness, since the issue of sex trafficking has been particularly prevalent in the news lately. Kondracki’s directorial debut received its premiere in Toronto this past September, and will likely make its way into Western cinemas in the second half of 2011. It features Rachel Weisz in a role that resembles in nature her Oscar-winning performance as a humanitarian activist in 2005’s The Constant Gardener and establishes an eminently happier ending for her character here.

“The Whistleblower” is the real-life account of Kathryn Bolkovac (Weisz), who encountered and exposed a large-scale cover-up of sex trafficking in post-war Bosnia. Assigned to a peacekeeping role in 1999, Kathryn excels, successfully securing a domestic violence conviction, and attracting the attention of women’s rights advocate Madeleine Rees (Redgrave). Madeleine offers her a job heading a branch of the United Nations, which she accepts despite her keenness to move back closer to her ex-husband and teenage daughter.

When Kathryn’s position leads her to a raid on a local bar, she discovers two beaten girls, who later confide in her that they have been trafficked into the country under false pretences. Acting swiftly to assess the severity of the situation Kathryn finds herself under pressure from senior figures, and her attempts to address this issue and enact justice are continually thwarted by internal conspiracies and community kingpins. The dawning conclusion is that this is a far bigger web of corruption than anticipated, which reaches beyond the confines of her department and involves many of her colleagues in the UN.

Aesthetically severe, “The Whistleblower” has elements which hark back to Lukas Moodysson’s alarming Lilya-4-Ever, concerning the ease at which young girls can be lured into the sex trade. The women are splayed across grubby scenery, presented in lewd images of torture, and engaged in particularly harrowing depictions of sexual abuse. Impassioned first-time director Kondracki has amped up the degradation well, but is far more competent at instigating shock through de-humanising imagery than developing insight into the underlying factors that have propelled the women into such a compromising position. Kondracki litters the film with confined close-ups of victimised souls (whether that be Weisz or one of her women) in dingy apartments, exercising a brand of sinkhole cinema that gives us little idea of the surrounding community or the network of criminality which governs it. External shots and neutral surrounding scenes would certainly aid this problem in providing scope, but the real problems lie in the muddled, wafer-thin script.

“The Whistleblower” has been written in the vein of a political disquisition; coursing through an unambitiously lineated narrative path to justice with few interesting dramatic shifts or relationships to speak of. It’s assumingly political, thematically brave, but seminally lacking in cinematic worth to justify existence beyond the duty of the documentarian. The attempts to branch off from the main strand are so terribly underdeveloped, featuring a back-story for one of the trafficked girls which tells us virtually nothing about their way of life other than “domestic violence is commonplace.” The film is constantly re-iterating this same theme without truly making these families accessible, reproaching their frayed relationships with pale single-mindedness. The villains of the piece aren’t sketched with any more shade either, recalling the two-dimensional depictions of corporate and ego-centric opposition to justice that we saw in last year’s Green Zone — albeit without a performance quite as bad as Greg Kinnear’s. Even Kathryn’s allies, the chief of which comes in the form of political-humanist project stalwart Vanessa Redgrave — who waltzes into scenes in an array of dinky hats to dole out solemn advice — hardly convince us that they know what they’re talking about.

If nothing else, “The Whistleblower” at least places us firmly on the side of justice, and expresses the procedural difficulties encountered when facing corruption through emotive force rather than boardroom chatter. A scene where Kathryn is trying to persuade one of the girls to go into protective custody with her, while one of her corrupt colleagues is intimidating the girl in the same room, is a particular highlight in terms of rousing our emotion. Kathryn’s palpable frustration at being continually undermined in her profession is laid bare, and her fury at the dissolving degree of control she has over these women is one of the film’s more emotionally honest moments. Weisz too is good in this scene, and fine overall, despite being shoehorned into the Charlize Theron/North Country role of battling sexual discrimination and political injustice while simultaneously trying to rescue a relationship with her family.

Kathryn’s familial difficulties are outlined in three moments: where she clutches a letter of rejection to her state police transfer request; where she cries during a telephone conversation with her daughter, and when she’s asked by a diplomat why the courts gave custody of her child to the father because that’s “so unusual.” The final instance of this trio of unthinkably lame methods of lumping a murky history onto our professionally-compromised heroine asserts that Kondracki really doesn’t have a handle on who Bolkovac was at this time, apart from a troubled divorcee (for reasons unbeknownst to us) and a valiant crusader. At one point Kathryn even cites her daughter as a reason for defending these young girls, as if the mere issue itself weren’t enough to capture all of her moralistic fibre.

As a political thriller of sorts, “The Whistleblower” is a tired venture, content to place its subject on a pedestal (like a documentary would) without endeavouring to make the story cinematic, or allude to the motivations of the characters involved on both sides. It feels strangely throttled as a conversation piece, with half-hearted attempts at generating interest beyond an historical timeline — all of which are rendered irrelevant anyway. There’s surely passion behind this project, but it’s made with such colourless labour that it’s difficult to care about what’s presented on screen, and almost impossible to recognise who Bolkovac was in the first place. Stick to the news.