What struck me most about Contagion, though, and what I suspect made Soderbergh-the-avowed-formalist want to make a pandemic thriller in the first place, was how purely and simply MEV-1, the contagion in question, serves as the story's engine—as seen here in overlapping narrative strands, the outbreak-containment scenario represents a sort of distillation of conflict-resolution storytelling. There is a moment of extreme panic, the nature of the problem gradually clarifies, and—spoileur alert—from then on out it's merely a matter of time until order gets restored (the movie has a surprising faith in human ingenuity, personified by a weirdly beatific Jennifer Ehle). Every film scenario is, in a sense, a virus the screenwriter must beat the clock to cure.
I have the sinking feeling that I have not articulated this correspondence very well, but what's a blogger to do? I guess I should just recommend that you guys try Forsythia, it cures most problems.
***
I was on the fence about seeing Warrior until a trustworthy source told me that there were some scenes involving Nick Nolte and a cassette-tape audiobook of Moby-Dick. After hearing this, I attended a matinee posthaste.
The film, co-written and directed by Gavin O'Connor (who made the serviceable hockey film Miracle, notable mostly for how becoming its period stylings were to star Kurt Russell), concerns two estranged brothers competing in a mixed-martial-arts tournament whose grand prize is the role of Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann's upcoming version of The Great Gatsby.
The whole grand-prix-style event, dubbed "Sparta," is the brainchild of a sinewy impresario fresh off Wall Street, played by an uncredited O'Connor, whose function in this movie is to appear on camera looking like he runs the show (he is, after all, played by the director), and to repeat the same press-release particulars an unbelievable number of times. Economy is not paramount here; classing up the sport of mixed-martial arts, otherwise known as some guys just fighting, is. In addition to Moby-Dick, there are references to Theogenes and certain laws of physics, and handsome hardcover editions of various great American novels (notably, Steinbeck) enter the frame in the very first scene.
Warrior is a relentlessly conventional movie, almost shameless in the way it hits all the expected struggling-to-stay-solvent working-class-struggles beats, but it also achieves, through dogged persistence, something like gravitas—mostly thanks to the scenes between Pop Nolte and Tom Hardy, which in a more terminologically accurate world might be called "mumblecore." For Hardy's character, even every cup of coffee is a point of contention, an olive branch to refuse; the whole performance emerges from behind a pained squint, and lips pursed in an obscure fury. Nolte's Paddy Conlon, making an honest go at sobriety, dons a cap that nobody under 60 years of age who doesn't claim to be of Irish descent could consider wearing. He engages in extremely American activites, such as driving around in a vintage car and reading the newspaper at diners. (A biographer may one day determine what it means that Nolte starred in Peaceful Warrior and then, a few years later, just plain Warrior.)
I think O'Connor's film qualifies as a triumph. It induced in this viewer an extraordinary amount of involuntary smiling, the most in a solo viewing since I bore witness to the initial avant-laser-tag scenes of Tron: Legacy. By saying that, I do not mean to diminish Warrior, but rather to commend the filmmaker and his cast for vivifying, and lending some measure of credibility to, the most tired tropes of comeback-trail realism.
1 comments:
Thank god we can still communicate. Contagion was solid entertainment. It's the kind of movie I desperately wish hollywood would make more of: an entertaining story about a relevant contemporary topic, made quickly on a low budget.
Semi (barely) related rant: It pisses me off to no end when gallons of ink are spilled to praise and fawn over wasteful, autistic hacks like David Fincher (Dragon Tattoo is three hours, boring for two and a half of that, took six months to shoot, and cost more than $100 million despite having only a handful of locations and only one legitimately "a list" name attached) while Soderbergh's insanely economic yet still narratively effective shooting techniques are rarely noted (Contagion was shot in nearly every major city on the planet earth, featured at least five actors capable of opening a major release, and still came in at only $60 million with about three months of shooting) if they're discussed at all.
We should be running filmmakers like Fincher and Scott Rudin up the flag pole for their wasteful, inefficient work practices ($100 million for a f-ing serial killer movie that mostly takes place on the screens of Macbook computers? Really? How much of that budget was spent on make-up and wardrobe to help Rooney Mara play dress up and make believe she's "not such a nice girl?" More than a little, I'd wager - someone needs to tell David there are cheaper ways to get laid). But we'll probably end up giving them a f-ing Oscar nomination instead.
Occupy Hollywood, yo.
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