by Roger Ebert
I suppose a movie could be made about American ice cream wars, but the truck drivers would all be movie stars. Forsyth finds ordinary people. The star of Comfort and Joy is Bill Paterson, an offhand, pleasant chap who is always polishing his car. The other actors—including the Italians who own Mr. McCool—are the kind of low key caricatures that Forsyth knows how to draw so carefully that they never go over the edge. This is a wonderful movie, even apart from the standard Forsyth running gag about people who think they look like somebody else (this movie’s examples are the losers of a Bob Hope and Fred Astaire look—alike contest).
The Dead
PG, 83 m., 1987
Donal McCann (Gabriel Conroy), Anjelica Huston (Gretta Conroy), Donal Donnelly (Freddy Malins), Frank Patterson (Bartell D’Arcy), Dan O’Herlihy (Mr. Brown), Cathleen Delany (Aunt Julia), Maria McDermottroe (Molly Ivors). Directed by John Huston. Produced by Chris Sievernich and Wieland Schulz-Keil. Screenplay by Tony Huston, based on the short story “The Dead” by James Joyce.
John Huston was dying when he directed The Dead. Tethered to an oxygen tank, hunched in a wheelchair, weak with emphysema and heart disease, he was a perfectionist attentive to the slightest nuance of the filming. James Joyce’s story, for that matter is all nuance until the final pages. It leads by subtle signs to a great outpouring of grief and love, but until then, as Huston observed, “The biggest piece of action is trying to pass the port.” He began shooting in January 1987, finished in April, and at the end of August, he died. He was 81.
All of this I have from The Hustons, by Lawrence Grobel, a biography that charts a scattered and troubled family, yet one that gathered Oscars in three generations, for Walter, John, and Anjelica. John’s daughter won hers for a supporting role in his previous film, Prizzi’s Honor (1985), and now she was playing the crucial role in The Dead. John’s son Tony, then thirty-seven, was nominated for his screenplay for The Dead, and served as his father’s assistant, aware of the secret being kept from the world, which was how ill John really was.
Joyce’s The Dead is one of the greatest short stories in the language, but would seem unfilmable. Its action takes place in Dublin in 1904 at a holiday party given by two elderly sisters and their niece, who have spent their lives performing or teaching music. The guests arrive, we observe them as they observe one another and listen to talk that means more than it says. At the end of the long evening, Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann), nephew of the Misses Morkan, leaves with his wife, Gretta (Anjelica Huston), to go back to the hotel where they will spend the night before going home to a far suburb in the morning.
All was prologue to their cab ride and an hour or so in the hotel. She tells him a story he has never heard, about a boy who was sweet on her when he was seventeen, a boy named Michael Furey, who died. He was a sickly boy, who stood in the rain on the night before she was to leave Galway and go to a convent school. “I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain,” she remembers. “But he said he did not want to live.” When she was only a week in the convent school, he died. “What was it he died of so young?” asks Gabriel. “Consumption, was it?” She replies, “I think he died from me.” In his final pages, Joyce enters the mind of Gabriel, who thinks about the dead boy, about his wife’s first great love, about how he has never felt a love like that, about those who have died, and about how all the rest of us will die as well—die, with our loves and lusts, our hopes and regrets, our plans and secrets, all dead.
Read with me James Joyce’s last paragraph:
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
There is, as John Huston realized, no way to translate this epiphany into the action of a movie script. It exists resolutely as thoughts expressed in words. He and Tony in their screenplay did what they had to do, and made it an interior monologue, spoken by the actor Donal McCann, as his wife, having wept, now sleeps on their bed. We note that he thinks of “his” journey, although she will accompany him. He thinks of himself as alone. When I first saw The Dead, I thought it brave and deeply felt but “an impossible film,” and I wrote: “There is no way in the world any filmmaker can reproduce the thoughts inside Gabriel’s head.” But of course there was. Huston could do the same thing Joyce did, and simply tell us what Gabriel was thinking.
The film follows the story with almost complete fidelity. A few details are transposed; Gabriel’s story about his grandfather’s horse is moved forward in the story, and given to Freddy Malins (Donal Donnelly), who arrives drunk but, as Gabriel reassures Mrs. Malins, “nearly all right.” Line for line and scene for scene, the movie faithfully reflects the book, even to such details as two young men slipping into the next room for a drink during a piano recital and then returning at its close to applaud loudly.
The turning point comes as everyone is leaving. Gabriel has already descended the stairs when the famous tenor Bartell D’Arcy (Frank Patterson) is finally prevailed upon to sing. Gabriel looks up and sees a figure paused listening on the stair, and eventually realizes it is his wife: “There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something,” and he thinks, “if he were a painter, he would paint her in that attitude.” John Huston is a painter, and does. The song is the same one Michael Furey used to sing, and awakens Gretta’s whole sad train of memory.
There is one line in the story that neither Huston nor anyone else could get into a film, because it is not the thought of Gabriel, but of Joyce. He tells us that as Gabriel regards his sleeping wife in the hotel, “a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul.” That is the phrase upon which the whole story wheels. He has been married for years and thinks he knows her, but suddenly he sees Gretta not in terms of wife, lover, or their history together, but as another human being, one who will also be alone on her journey westward.
The Dead ends in sadness, but it is one of the great romantic films, fearless in its regard for regret and tenderness. John Huston, who lived for years in Ireland and raised Anjelica there until she was sixteen, had an instinctive sympathy for the kindness with which the guests at the Misses Morkan’s party accepted one another’s lives and failings. They have all fallen short of their hopes, and know it. Freddy Malins is a drunk, but as we see him seated beside his mother, we suspect that she has forced him to pursue defeat. Mr. Brown (Dan O’Herlihy) is a drunk in the classic mold, because of uncomplicated alcoholism. Molly Ivors (Maria McDermottroe), who supports the Republican cause, hurries off early to a meeting, still convinced their problems have political solutions. Aunt Julia (Cathleen Delany), who confesses she had a decent voice years ago, is persuaded to sing, and does so, not very well. Freddy lurches forward to blurt out praise that is so effusive, it embarrasses her in front of the party, but everyone understands that Julia’s voice has failed, and that Freddy means well.
Gabriel is the witness to it all. An early shot shows the back of his head, regarding everyone in the room. Later he will see his wife, finally, as the person she really is and always has been. And he will see himself, with his ambitions as a journalist, the bright light of his family, the pride of his aunts, as a paltry fellow resting on unworthy accomplishments. Did these thoughts go through John Huston’s mind as he chose his last film and directed it? How could
they not? And if all those sad things were true, then he could at least communicate them with grace and poetry, in a film as quiet and forgiving as the falling snow.
Disney’s A Christmas Carol
PG, 95 m., 2009
Jim Carrey (Scrooge/Ghosts of Christmas), Robin Wright Penn (Belle/Fan), Gary Oldman (Cratchit/Marley/Tiny Tim), Colin Firth (Fred), Cary Elwes (Dick Wilkins/Fiddler/Businessman), Bob Hoskins (Fezziwig/Old Joe), Fionnula Flanagan (Mrs. Dilber). Directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Zemeckis, Steve Starkey, and Jack Rapke. Screenplay by Zemeckis, based on the story by Charles Dickens.
A Christmas Carol by Robert Zemeckis (and Charles Dickens, of course) is an exhilarating visual experience and proves for the third time he’s one of the few directors who knows what he’s doing with 3-D. The story that Dickens wrote in 1838 remains timeless, and if it’s supercharged here with Scrooge swooping the London streets as freely as Superman, well, once you let ghosts into a movie there’s room for anything.
The story I will not repeat for you. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future will not come as news. I’d rather dwell on the look of the picture, which is true to the spirit of Dickens (in some moods) as he cheerfully exaggerates. He usually starts with plucky young heroes or heroines and surrounds them with a gallery of characters and caricatures. Here his protagonist is the caricature: Ebenezer Scrooge, never thinner, never more stooped, never more bitter.
Jim Carrey is in there somewhere beneath the performance-capture animation; you can recognize his expressive mouth, but in general the Zemeckis characters don’t resemble their originals overmuch. In his Polar Express, you were sure that was Tom Hanks, but here you’re not equally sure of Gary Oldman, Robin Wright Penn, and Bob Hoskins.
Zemeckis places these characters in a London that twists and stretches its setting to reflect the macabre mood. Consider Scrooge’s living room, so narrow and tall just as he is. The home of his nephew, Fred, by contrast, is as wide and warm as Fred’s personality.
Animation provides the freedom to show just about anything, and Zemeckis uses it. Occasionally, he even seems to be evoking the ghost of Salvador Dali, as in a striking sequence where all the furniture disappears and a towering grandfather clock looms over Scrooge, a floor slanting into distant perspective.
The three starring ghosts are also spectacular grotesques. I like the first, a little elfin figure with a head constantly afire and a hat shaped like a candlesnuffer. Sometimes he playfully shakes his flames like a kid tossing the hair out of his eyes. After another (ahem) ghost flies out through the window, Scrooge runs over to see the whole street filled with floating spectral figures, each one chained to a heavy block, like so many Chicago mobsters sleeping with the fishes.
Can you talk about performances in characters so much assembled by committee? You can discuss the voices, and Carrey works overtime as not only Scrooge but all three of the Christmas ghosts. Gary Oldman voices Bob Cratchit, Marley, and Tiny Tim.
I remain unconvinced that 3-D represents the future of the movies, but it tells you something that Zemeckis’s three 3-D features (also including Beowulf) have wrestled from me eleven of a possible twelve stars. I like the way he does it. He seems to have a more sure touch than many other directors, using 3-D instead of being used by it. If the foreground is occupied by close objects, they’re usually looming inward, not out over our heads. Note the foreground wall-mounted bells we look past when Scrooge, far below, enters his home; as one and then another slowly starts to move, it’s a nice little touch.
Another one: The score by Alan Silvestri sneaks in some traditional Christmas carols, but you have to listen for such as “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” when its distinctive cadences turn sinister during a perilous flight through London.
So should you take the kiddies? Hmmm. I’m not so sure. When I was small, this movie would have scared the living ectoplasm out of me. Today’s kids have seen more and are tougher. Anyway, A Christmas Carol has the one quality parents hope for in a family movie: It’s entertaining for adults.
Elf
PG, 95 m., 2003
Will Ferrell (Buddy), James Caan (Walter), Zooey Deschanel (Jovie), Mary Steenburgen (Emily), Edward Asner (Santa Claus), Bob Newhart (Papa Elf), Daniel Tay (Michael), Faizon Love (Elf Manager). Directed by Jon Favreau and produced by Jon Berg, Todd Komarnicki, and Shauna Weinberg. Screenplay by David Berenbaum.
If I were to tell you Elf stars Will Ferrell as a human named Buddy who thinks he is an elf and Ed Asner as Santa Claus, would you feel an urgent desire to see this film? Neither did I. I thought it would be clunky, stupid, and obvious, like The Santa Clause or How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It would have grotesque special effects and lumber about in the wreckage of holiday cheer, foisting upon us a chaste romance involving the only girl in America who doesn’t know that a man who thinks he is an elf is by definition a pervert.
That’s what I thought it would be. It took me about ten seconds of seeing Will Ferrell in the elf costume to realize how very wrong I was. This is one of those rare Christmas comedies that has a heart, a brain, and a wicked sense of humor, and it charms the socks right off the mantelpiece.
Even the unexpected casting is on the money. James Caan as the elf’s biological father. Yes! Bob Newhart as his adoptive elf father. Yes! Mary Steenburgen as Caan’s wife, who welcomes an adult son into her family. Yes! Zooey Deschanel as the girl who works in a department store and falls for his elfin charm. Yes! Faizon Love as Santa’s elf manager—does it get any better than this? Yes, it does. Peter Dinklage, who played the dwarf in The Station Agent, has a brief but sublime scene in which he cuts right to the bottom line of elfhood.
Elf, directed by Jon Favreau and written by David Berenbaum, begins with a tragic misunderstanding on a Christmas long ago. As Santa is making his rounds, a human orphan crawls into his sack and accidentally hitches a ride to the North Pole. Raised as an elf by Papa Elf (Newhart), he knows he’s at least four feet taller than most of the other elves, and eventually he decides to go to New York and seek out his birth father.
This is Walter (Caan), a hard-bitten publisher whose heart does not instantly melt at the prospect of a six-foot man in a green tunic and yellow stretch tights who says he is his son. But when Buddy drops the name of Walter’s long-lost girlfriend, a faraway look appears in the old man’s eyes, and soon Buddy is invited home, where Mary Steenburgen proves she is the only actress in America who could welcome her husband’s out-of-wedlock elf into her family and make us believe she means it.
The plot is pretty standard stuff, involving a crisis at the old man’s publishing company and a need for a best-selling children’s book, but there are sweet subplots involving Buddy’s new little brother, Michael (Daniel Tay), and Buddy’s awkward but heartfelt little romance with the department store girl (Deschanel). Plus heart-tugging unfinished business at the North Pole.
Of course there’s a big scene involving Buddy’s confrontation with the department store Santa Claus, who (clever elf that he is) Buddy instantly spots as an imposter. “You sit on a throne of lies!” he tells this Santa. Indeed, the whole world has grown too cynical, which is why Santa is facing an energy crisis this year. His sleigh is powered by faith, and if enough people don’t believe in Santa Claus, it can’t fly. That leads to one of those scenes where a flying machine (in this case, oddly enough, the very sleigh we were just discussing) tries to fly and doesn’t seem to be able to achieve takeoff velocity, and . . . well, it would be a terrible thing if Santa were to go down in flames, so let’s hope Buddy convinces enough people to believe. It should be easy. He convinced me this was a good movie, and that’s a miracle on 34th Street right there.
Fanny and Alexander
R, 188 m., 1983
Gunn Wallgren (Helena Ekdahl), Ewa Froling (Emile Ekdahl), Jarl Kulle (Gustav Adolf Ekdahl), Mona Malm (Alma Ekdahl). Jan Malmsjo (Bishop Edvard Vergérus). Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Produced by Jörn Donner. Screenplay by Ingmar Bergman.
Ing
mar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982) was intended to be his last film, and in it, he tends to the business of being young, of being middle-aged, of being old, of being a man, woman, Christian, Jew, sane, crazy, rich, poor, religious, profane. He creates a world in which the utmost certainty exists side by side with ghosts and magic, and a gallery of characters who are unforgettable in their peculiarities. Small wonder one of his inspirations was Dickens.
It is 1907, in an unnamed Swedish town. The movie plunges into the Christmas Eve celebration of an enormous family, introducing the characters on the fly as they talk, drink, flirt, and plot. They are surrounded by voluptuousness; the Ekdahl family is wealthy and the matriarch, Helena, lives in an enormous home crowded with antique furniture, rich furnishings, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, rugs, flowers, plants, and clocks—always clocks in a Bergman film, their hours striking in a way that is somehow ominous. One room spills into another, as we see when the half-drunk guests join hands for a song while parading through the flat.
Family intrigues are revealed: Gustav Adolf, Helena’s third son, is a philanderer whose adventures are forgiven by his merry, buxom wife, Alma, because she likes him as he is. The second son, Carl, is a failed professor, married to a German woman no one likes (although they should), deeply in debt to his mother. The first son, Oscar, runs the family theater, and is moved to tears in his Christmas Eve speech to the staff before joining the party. Oscar is married to Emilie, a grave beauty, and they have two children, Fanny and Alexander. Much of the film is seen through their eyes, especially Alexander’s, but other moments take place entirely within the imaginations of the characters.
Gustav’s marriage is eccentric, Carl’s is sad, and Oscar’s is filled with love—for his family, and the theater. We learn quickly that Gustav is having an affair with Maj, Oscar and Emilie’s lame, plump young maid. Alma knows it; indeed, it is openly discussed by everyone in the family. We also learn that Helena, a widow, has been the lover and is still the best friend of Isak Jacobi, a Jewish art dealer and money lender. (Bergman has said there is a little of himself in all the male characters.)
