Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my thoughts on a pair of flicks, one I loved to death and one I thought was good, but disappointing. I saw both PERFUME, by Tom Tykwer, and FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, by Clint Eastwood. So, which is which? Let me start with...
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
Of the two, this was the film I was most looking forward to. Don't get me wrong, PERFUME looked good, but I was really jonesing for a good war movie. It could be all the CALL OF DUTY 2 I've been playing recently. The footage from the trailer made this look like Clint Eastwood by way of Steven Spielberg, but not a copy of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
What they don't tell us in the trailers is that the actual battle of Iwo Jima isn't the focus of the movie. I suppose if I was literate and read the original novel upon which this film is based I might have known that, but I didn't, so I was expecting more than just 35% of the film to be a war movie.
That's not to say that the other 65% isn't interesting. What you have is the story of the soldiers who raised the flag in that iconic image from Iwo Jima being used by the Government as a way to sell war bonds. The soldiers go along with it because it is quickly explained to them that the US is running out of money for the war. That means they're about to stop production on weapons, ammunition, tanks, planes, etc, which would put every soldier at more risk.
The story is these guys dealing with being labeled heroes for putting up a flag, their pride in their friends, their shame for not still fighting, their friendship getting them through all that.
I have to say that as much I liked following this weird political aspect to WW2, I missed the battle. I wanted to see the story of Iwo Jima, not the story of how it was used to raise money.
I think I felt that way because of the whole idea I fell in love with... the idea of telling the story of a huge battle, like the fight over Iwo Jima, in two films, one telling the story of the men fighting for the US, the other the same battle, but from the perspective of the Japanese. I think that's fascinating and I'm sure we'll see things brought up in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS fully realized from that second perspective in LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA next year.
When the battle turned out to only be a fraction of the story in this film I couldn't help but feel disappointed. The whole idea of two films mirroring each other, but from two radically different perspectives, lost a little of its appeal to me if we only spend a small amount of screen-time at the actual battle site.
The acting is strong all across the board, especially from Ryan Phillippe, surprise surprise. Adam Beach is probably the strongest of the main cast, though. He plays the Indian soldier who had a hand in raising the flag and has the most interesting dramatic conflicts in the story. He's being paraded as a hero, yet still can't get served at some restaurants. The military brass even say some really racist, shitty things about him as he's out there raising money for them.
My favorites were the smaller parts... that should have been bigger... You had great character actors during the Iwo Jima battle... Robert Patrick, Barry Pepper (who is required to be a soldier in every WW2 movie ever made), Jamie Bell and even Paul Walker, who is the unlucky fucker to have raised the FIRST flag at Iwo Jima, not the second, iconic one that was immortalized in that photo. He has a very small role, but he was good in the bits he was in.
It was also nice seeing Melanie Lynskey (got a bit of a crush on her, you know) pop up as the attention grabbing fiancee of Jesse Bradford's character.
I'm no Paul Haggis hater. I'm pretty lukewarm on CRASH and really like MILLION DOLLAR BABY, but even I admit his work is starting to show some tell-tale signs. I can feel him on this film. There's a lot of important messages and arcs in this movie, but they all feel very surface level, like the message in CRASH. Important message, but there isn't the complexity you'd expect.
Count me disappointed, but not embittered. The flick is solid, just not the great greatness I was expecting. Here's hoping LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA works a little better for me.
PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER
First thing's first... if you haven't seen the new, full length trailer for this flick... DON'T WATCH IT. DO. NOT. WATCH. IT. I don't know what the hell Dreamworks' marketing department were thinking when they cut that trailer, but it manages to show every big point in the movie, including the big bizarre fucking ending.
Much like FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, PERFUME is based on a novel that I haven't read. However, here that only serviced to give me a story full of surprises. I won't give them all away here, but I will say that I did not expect this film to be a fairy tale. I don't know who sold their souls, but us film fans are reaping the benefits. There's been a rash of badass adult fairy tales this year. PAN'S LABYRINTH, CHILDREN OF MEN and now PERFUME.
The flick is about a troubled boy who was shat out by his mother in the stinkiest, grimiest fish market in one of the world's largest cities. From the first breath his senses were assaulted. We come to discover, through a great narration by the unmistakable John Hurt, that this boy, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) has the keenest nose ever given to a human being. He's fascinated by scent and has an uncanny ability to use his nose for damn near anything. Need to find someone miles away? He can focus on their smell and find 'em. All he needs is a breeze. Need to break down the components of a perfume? He can do it.
Jean-Baptiste becomes obsessed with the idea of preserving the smells of people, especially red-headed women. He believes the smell of a person is their soul, soon finding it departs them shortly after their deaths.
The movie goes down a twisted spiral that descends further and further into this bizarre fantasy world, but instead of pulling you out of the movie by doing so I found I was pulled in deeper.
This is a great flick. Absolutely surprising, off-kilter and complex.
The acting is fantastic, the cast littered with some great characters and great actors playing them, like Dustin Hoffman as a perfumer who is floored by the boy's talent, and the great Alan Rickman as a wealthy Lord fearful for his redheaded daughter's safety when bodies start to turn up in his village.
Ben Whishaw carries the film effortlessly, in the kind of performance you see critics call "Breathtaking" and "Groundbreaking" and "the birth of a star." I don't know how true all that is, but he carries a film that lives and dies based upon your sympathy for Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. If the audience isn't willing to take this journey with him, if he played this too creepy or too over-the-top, the whole film would have crumbled. It would have just been a bizarre trainwreck. Thankfully Whishaw stepped up to the plate and made this film as great as it ended up being.
Much props to RUN LOLA RUN'S Tom Tykwer for successfully helming this material which, by all accounts, was a difficult task to translate from book to film. The flick comes out in the US in December. Mark your calendars!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
