Last night I continued making headway into a backlog of screeners that film
publicists had sent me as long as two years ago. While I tend to not write
anything about a bad film, it is probably worth saying a word or two about
three that I discarded midway through viewing since they demonstrate a kind
of malaise in English-language independent film. The fourth, a small jewel
from Tajikstan, shines by comparison.
A Love Song for Bobby Long stars John Travolta as an aging alcoholic
college professor in New Orleans who sits around in a ramshackle and
cavernous house with his cronies talking about life and death. Based on a
novel by Ronald Everett Capps, it is meant to evoke Tennessee Williams or
Carson MacCullers but mostly it evokes yawns. When a movie consists of
nothing but conversations, theyd better be pretty damned good
conversations. It can be done, of course. My Dinner With André was
nothing but Wallace Shawn talking with Andre Gregory over dinner. But that
was co-written by Shawn and Gregory, two major talents, and directed by
Louis Malle. Enough said.
Stage Beauty is a historical costume drama based on the life of Ned
Kynaston, one of the last male actors to play females in Restoration drama.
I assume that it was trying to explore issues of gender in the same fashion
as the superlative Orlando, another British product. But when a couple of
young women introduced themselves to Kynaston as his biggest fans, the
anachronism was so violently pronounced that I threw myself across the
bedroom floor, tore the DVD from the player and set fire to it.
Beyond the Sea is directed by and stars Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin. This
biopic is a clear effort to break through genre conventions found in the
highly overrated Ray and Walk the Line. It uses all sorts of breaking
the fourth wall techniques to dig deeper into the lounge singers
identity. In one scene, as the mature Darin is making a film about himself
(a film within the film within the film), he is confronted by himself as a
boy. All this gimmickry cannot substitute for a solid script. Ill let my
favorite critic Mr. Cranky have the final word on this: And here's the
real problem: Bobby Darin just doesn't seem that interesting. Spacey wants
us to think Darin had some profound influence on music, but I didn't see
it. So he made it big with Splish Splash. That's not exactly Beethoven's
Fifth.
Angel on the Right was written and directed by Jamshed Usmonov. It was
filmed in 2002 in his home town in Tajikstan and includes many townspeople
in starring roles. By coincidence, the plot is similar to All for Zucker,
another study of post-Communist life. Like Zucker, the main character Hamro
(Maruf Pulodzoda) has huge debts that he is desperate to pay off. Both have
very few redeeming qualities, but are transformed after a fashion as they
go through their respective ordeals.
Hamro is a small-time gangster who has been lured back from Moscow to his
native village under false pretenses. Led to believe that his mother is on
her deathbed, he resolves to spend the money necessary to repair her house
so she can die in peace--above all she needs a wider front door that can
accommodate her coffin. We soon discover that her illness was nothing but
an act, something that might have been evident from what the doctor--a
willing participant in the ruse--has told him: she is suffering from acute
Oriental acidilipus.
Hamros troubles take a turn for the worse when a posse of local men shows
up at his mothers house with the son he has abandoned. Take him, they
demand. When Hamro puts up his fists to fend them off, a martial arts
expert they have recruited just for the occasion beats him to a pulp. From
that point on, Hamro is tailed around by the sweet-faced boy who he holds
at arms length. His tentative reconciliation with the boy and his mother
unfolds in unexpected ways in a film that is determined to avoid
sermonizing of any sort.
The title of the film comes from Moslem lore. It is believed that there is
an angel on every human beings left and right shoulders that respectively
record ones sins and good deeds into a book during a lifetime. If the book
of sins is heavier than the book of good deeds, you will go to hell. If
vice versa, you go to heaven. It is the strength of Usmonovs film that one
cant be sure where Hamro is ultimately destined to go. Movies succeed when
they can portray human nature in all its complexity. Whatever the
shortcomings of this modest film, it surely stands out on the ability to
render a singular human being with all his strengths and weaknesses.
The contrast between Usmonovs film and the three others could not be
sharper. One is left with the feeling that there is a kind of inverse
relationship between money and art. The more money one has to throw around,
the worse the product. It is a sign of the dying culture of Anglo-American
imperialism that even films that ostensibly go against the commercial grain
are burdened by an inability to deal with the real problems of real people.
There are millions of Hamros in the United States and Great Britain who
could be the subject of a serious film but somehow directors and
screenwriters dont have the eyes to see them.
Angel on the Right is available in DVD at your better video stores and
online. It is well worth seeing.
