Hey folks, Harry here with the latest from our chief Chicago correspondent and overall muscle on the streets, Capone. He's got a preview of two fantastic sounding movies here. ENDURING LOVE sounds spectacular! And MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, well it sure has come a long way since that rough-version was screened at SUNDANCE with mixed response... now, it seems to be the film we had hoped for out of Walter Salles and that material. Here ya go...
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here with a couple of top-notch fall releases that are setting the season off better than it has any right to be set off. That doen't make any damn sense, I know. In other news, the schedule for the Chicago International Film Festival (Oct 7-21) just came out today, and you know I'm all over that, but I'll dive into that in the near future. Let's just say that the opening night film is KINSEY and the closing night film is THE POLAR EXPRESS, and leave it with that.
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES
One of the seemingly endless number of gaps in my knowledge of history centers on the life of Che Guevara prior to his pivotal role in the Cuban Revolution. Thankfully, Guevara kept a journal during the most important period in his life before his life as a rebel leader. I’ll never read “The Motorcycle Diaries,” but I’m comforted knowing it’s out there. From the great Brazilian director Walter Salles (CENTRAL STATION, BEHIND THE SUN) comes the filmed version of Guevara’s travels throughout South America as a medical student in his 20s. Along with his friend Alberto Granado (who also wrote a book about the journey), Guevara travelled nearly the length of the continent to a leper colony on a rickety motorcycle. The first of many amazing things about the film is that it follows the exact journey of Guevara and Granado (played by newcomer Rodrigo De la Serna, who turns in one of the best performances of the year in my humble estimation), so we get to see what they saw: the poverty, the injustice, the sickness, but also the great beauty and majesty of the region. Guevara didn’t believe in borders; he felt the entire Latin continent should be one unified force. The film makes a strong case for such a belief.
Gael Garcia Bernal (from Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN and the upcoming Almodovar film BAD EDUCATION) plays the young Guevara, who leaves a loving and overprotective family and gets a crash course in political and economic inequality. By the time the pair reach the leper colony, Guevara’s world view has completely changed, and Bernal does a remarkable job of showing the quiet rage that existed in Guevara’s soul as a result of these journeys. But THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES is not all about the formative years of a revolutionary. The film has a cunning sense of humor, a swirling sense of adventure (remember, this was supposed to be a vacation for the two), and even a passionate sense of lust for life and women.
Salles does not draw simple conclusions about what factors went into Guevara’s changes of heart and purpose. His heartbreak over a woman from a well-off family who rejects him could have had just as much of an impact on him as seeing migrant workers not making enough to ever money get out of debt. I’ll admit right now that despite good advanced word on this film, I was dreading what I’d envisioned would be a political history lesson. When the film was over, I realized I’d seen something that will easily make my 10 Best of the Year list. It’s that good and that thoroughly entertaining. Every performance is as good as I’ve seen in any film from any nation, the beauty of the areas visited in mind-boggling, and the scope of the film is small enough not to get lost but large enough to understand the importance of the cumulative travel experience. Salles ends the film the only way he could: with a montage of faces of the people that Guevara and Granado saw on their journey, shot in the deepest black-and-white I’ve ever seen. This is a stunning achievement, and it opens in most cities on October 1.
ENDURING LOVE
Hey, do you like intensely creepy films that feature next-to-no violence or blood and still manage to scare be holy hellfire right out of you? Then by all means test drive the film with the unlikeliest title for one of the most tension-filled films I’ve seen all year, ENDURING LOVE. Let’s consider the players for a moment. Director Roger Michell is on a role. He proved himself the master of adult love stories with NOTTING HILL and with elderly adult love stories with THE MOTHER. But he can also work his way around big stars in top-notch mind-screwing dramas like CHANGING LANES. Actor Daniel Craig (the “young” lover in THE MOTHER; a scary killer in ROAD TO PERDITION) plays Joe, a college philosophy professor in a long-term relationship with Claire (the luminous Samantha Morton). At this point, you should already be drooling at the bit just to see these two actors working with this director. But I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet. As the film opens, Joe and Claire are setting up a picnic in the lovely British countryside. Joe surprises Claire with fine champagne and is clearly about to propose to her, but she’s distracted and peering over his shoulder at an odd sight: a hot-air balloon coming down too earth much to fast and with only a young boy in the gondola. By the time the balloon hits the ground, about five men, complete strangers to each other, are waiting to pull it down and get the boy out. Just when all appears safe and all the men are holding on tight, a gust of wind lifts the balloon in the air with everybody hanging on for dear life. Four of the five men, drop before the balloon gets too high, but a fifth man doesn’t. He is lifted hundreds of feet into the air, where he eventually loses his grip and falls to his death. The scene is so well executed, you will absolutely forget to breathe.
Joe and one of the other men, Jed (Rhys Ifans), attempt to find the dead man’s body, which they do in one of the film’s only truly shocking visuals. Jed is so shaken by the incident that he asks (practically begs) Joe to kneel and pray with him over the dead man’s freakishly contorted body. Joe obliges the fragile-looking man, and lives to regret this decision over the course of the next 90 minutes.
Director Mitchell spends a lot of time just hanging out with Joe and Claire. After the incident, we see the couple at dinner with close friends played by Bill Nighy and Susan Lynch, but Joe isn’t the same man. He keeps going over the incident in his mind, wondering if maybe he let go of the balloon first and the other three followed, thereby sealing the fate of the last man hanging. The guilt is bordering on overwhelming, and it’s driving a wedge between him and Claire. Then he gets a call from Jed, who also seems jumpy and guilty about the incident, so Joe agrees to meet with him, he thinks to talk about the accident. Instead Jed throws out odd statements like “We have a connection” and “Why are you denying what we shared?” and similar stalker-like comments. Joe views Jed is pathetic and lonely, but not in any way a threat, but because this seeming obsession seems tied to the accident, Joe isn’t quite ready to simply dismiss the poor bloke outright. Another mistake. Jed keeps popping up so often at the most inopportune time, spouting these crazed expression of love, that we almost wonder if he might be a figment of Joe’s guilt-ridden conscience. Since Joe has trouble convincing Claire and his other friends of this guy’s increasingly dubious behavior, he reacts by pushing away everybody that cares about him. ENDURING LOVE is as much a story about a man torn up inside as it is about a stalker.
Even in the film’s third act, when you expect Ifans to explode with rage and become the gay equivalent of Glenn Close in FATAL ATTRACTION, that’s no exactly what happens. The director has too much respect for the material to make it that easy for us to hate and fear Jed. Ifans is on a role right now, with juicy and varied roles in DANNY DECKCHAIR and VANITY FAIR. He’s certainly come a long way since his famed tighty-whitey scene in NOTTING HILL. In terms of acting, there isn’t a sour note on the screen Morton and Craig are quite good together, swinging from great love and despising each other in a short span. The film captures what ultimately can be called Joe’s fall into depression, and when he and Jed finally settle the matter, the unexpected results are shocking. ENDURING LOVE spends a lot of time being subtle, but the net result is tremendous and powerful. I believe the film opens sometime in October.
Capone
