Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here, with three films that are opening wide or wider today, and will likely only be playing on a small number of screens in the cities where they are opening. That’s right folks, it’s time to seek out the art houses in your neck of the woods. Enjoy…
SUGAR
Three years ago filmmakers and writers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck seemingly came out of nowhere to deliver one of the most highly praised films of 2006, the remarkable HALF NELSON with Ryan Gosling. Then the pair seemingly vanished, only to resurface last year on the festival circuit with SUGAR, another small and utterly authentic story about a young man from the Dominican Republic nicknamed Sugar, played by first-time actor Algenis Perez Soto, who manages to convey the confidence his character has in his in his abilities as an up-and-coming baseball pitcher, while still being incredibly shy. Sugar plays for the Kansas City development team in the DR, and is called up to play in the minor league in the States. He's soon on a plane to the smallest small town in Iowa, staying with an elderly couple that clearly love baseball and house up-and-coming players on a regular basis. With almost no English in his vocabulary and being tossed in a strange place and forced to adjust, Sugar throws himself into the game and delivers some powerful pitching that earns him a place as a starter.
On the surface, SUGAR is a film about culture clash, as this man from the Dominican slums comes to the United States to live its dream. At its heart, the film is about the call of America that is heard around the world, and how often those who come to this country are disappointed, not with how much America has to offer but how little of it they can afford. Sugar is also a top-notch baseball movie showing us a sliver of the professional baseball structure that we never get to see. The system uses the players' desire to live and work in the United States as a means to rope them in and get them to play for nothing until they are ready to call up to the "Show" or send them packing. With Sugar's powerful pitch, he seems destined for greater things, but a minor injury and the introduction of an equally impressive new pitcher to the team makes the young man lose his confidence. This isn't as hard to believe when you consider that Sugar is only 19 when he comes to the United States. Off the field, Sugar and his fellow Latin American teammates are forced to endure a series of small humiliations, racism and disappointments.
Sugar makes a surprising move late in the film that puts him in even more questionable circumstances that make you anxious for his future. In many ways, the movie is about the loss of one man's innocence or at least the harsh realization that dreams and reality rarely intersect. And even when they do meet in the real world, the dream is often short lived. There's a poignant scene near the end of the film where Sugar meets a group of former major league players, all from Latin America, who get together in an organized league to play the kind of baseball they grew up dreaming about. I have no doubt in my mind that these other players are the real-life inspiration for this story. We rely on these independent filmmakers to find and relay these deeply personal stories with careful attention to detail and more heart than any studio film could ever bring to a subject like this. SUGAR is a great, spiritually uplifting piece that you should travel as many miles as it takes to watch this extraordinary movie.
AMERICAN VIOLET
All the wrong movie for all the right reasons. One of the higher-profile films from SXSW this year, AMERICAN VIOLET proved to me that there is absolutely a compelling story to be told based on the facts of the case of Dee Roberts (played by the impressive newcomer Nicole Beharie), the young mother of four little girls who was caught up in a sweep of her housing project by police trying to rid the area of drug dealers. The trouble is this movie is not the great work that I firmly believe can be told about this tale. Based on the coerced informant testimony of one desperate actual drug supplier, Dee's name was given to police and she was picked up and held for a many weeks while her children were in the care of both her mother (Alfre Woodard) and her ex-boyfriend (rapper Xzibit). After many months and much heartache as she loses her job, Dee is cleared of the charges. But an ACLU lawyer (Tim Blake Nelson) has been brought in to stop the clearly racist sweeps of the almost entirely black areas of this small Texas town. He suggests that Dee sue the police for racist law enforcement tactics, and eventually she agrees.
Despite a particularly nuanced performance by Will Patton as a former narcotics officer who helps the ACLU investigate their claim, since he used to be part of the system, AMERICAN VIOLET finds itself frequently bogged down in preachy and overly simplified rhetoric. What's worse is the fiendish performance by Michael O'Keefe as the police chief, whose barely veiled racist tendencies are brought to the surface in the movie's most ridiculous sequence by far. I have no trouble believing the real-life police chief was a certifiable prick, but the only thing missing from this film's villainous portrayal is a waxed mustache to twirl. Most of the film is equally heavy handed and obvious, and it so didn't need to be. Is it any surprise that the Texas justice system is fucked? There's practically an entire sub-genre of films dedicated to proving that. The heavy-handed approach does a great disservice to this otherwise inspiring and important story, and I have to put the blame solely on director Tim Disney, who has a lot to learn about pacing and building a dramatic atmosphere.
I grew increasingly frustrated with AMERICAN VIOLET because I could feel a great movie struggling to break free. In the hands of a better storyteller, Dee Roberts' story could have made for some truly righteous storytelling. Instead, we are force fed an overblown plot about justice, racism and the screwed up legal system. This should have been a film about a brave woman with everything to lose going up against a law enforcement agency and legal system that is rotten to the core. Instead, we are saddled with clichés, stereotypes and contradictions. If you still consider “After-School Specials” high drama, then maybe there's something here for you. Otherwise, stay away.
HUNGER
The events detailed in HUNGER are fairly simple to follow and understand, but there is something so inherently wonderful and moving about the means by which co-writer and director Steve McQueen tells this familiar tale of the last days of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands that you can almost feel the weight and importance of these moments in history. The film does not begin with Sands or any of his fellow prisoners in Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. Instead it begins with a guard at the prison. Raymond Lohan (played by Stuart Graham) was probably an ordinary man who didn't see the job he had or the prisoners he was attending to to be anything or anyone extraordinary. We also meet a new prisoner named Davey Gillen (Brian Mulligan), who refuses to wear the prison uniform and spends a great deal of the movie naked or simply wearing a blanket. Gillen is put in a cell with Gerry Campbell, who has been in the prison for years and knows how to smuggle things and messages in and out of their confines.
Much of HUNGER is told in these segmented moments, often with only two men sharing the screen together at a time. Almost more important, great portions of the film pass without any dialogue, which adds to the haunting quality of the work. For large chunks of the movie, Sands is not a key player. But when we finally get to the scene most critics have said is one of the strongest of 2008 (when most critics saw film at one festival or another), the impact is almost more than one can take. In a jailhouse conversation between Sands (Michael Fassbender) and Father Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham), the two men manage to exchange a potent mixture of humorous moments and some of the darkest philosophy about moral dignity. Sands lays out his and other inmates' plans for a hunger strike (one which actually killed Sands). The discussion is almost more focused and intense than I could take, especially since the entire 17-minute conversation is done in a single, unbroken take.
HUNGER 's most agonizing moments are, of course, seeing Sands emaciated and dying in the prison hospital. He sees a small number of visitors before his demise, and those exchanges are fairly devastating. By using one stark moment after another, McQueen, without flaw, captures these episodes in a way that maximizes his ability to pull out the raw and ugly truth of each scene. I'm not even sure if I'm describing it accurately, let alone in a way that would compel you to see this film. But see it you should. You're going to have an exceedingly difficult time shaking the pain and the filth of this experience.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
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