Capital Projections: Saints and sinners edition
Capital Projections is The DC Line’s selective and subjective guide to notable movie screenings in the coming week. This week’s openings include potential Oscar front-runners, and repertory offerings include sobering Christmas fare to go along with your eggnog.
A HIDDEN LIFE
Terence Malick is one of the most celebrated filmmakers working today — and one of the most divisive. While his 1973 debut Badlands was a taut if dreamy portrayal of serial killer Charles Starkweather (played by Martin Sheen), his later films like The Tree of Life and To the Wonder earned critical favor but were (for me) steeped in a self-indulgent visual poetry that eschewed narrative for an increasingly obscure mysticism (and don’t get me started on the twirling). Malick has tackled subjects from the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, to the music scene in Austin, Texas, with his distinct if overheated visual poetry, but with his latest film, he may have found the subject most suited to such breathless imagery: a bona fide saint.
A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), an Austrian farmer who in his youth was a troublemaker. He was almost 30 when he married Fani (Valerie Pachner), and after some resistance he grew to appreciate her Catholic faith. His conversion was strong enough that, when it came time to pledge an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, Franz refused, even though it meant he would be imprisoned and his wife and three daughters shunned.
Jägerstätter was beatified by the Catholic Church in 2007, and his holy life, stubborn and sacrificial, is a perfect match for Malick, whose films frequently grapple with faith and transgression. Cinematographer Jörg Widmer, who was a camera operator on The Tree of Life, captures gorgeous, sweeping landscapes that will be familiar to Malick devotees. The sometimes disorienting photography places the camera so close to its subjects that any movement at all becomes dizzying, yet this aesthetic is fraught with spiritual meaning. As the community begins to hassle Franz and his family for not going along with societal trends, the distorted visuals caused by extreme wide-angle lenses seem to reflect the village’s warped morality, embracing evil and taunting the one good man in their midst. As the world goes mad, Franz struggles to remain a steadfast anchor despite the chaos. The life of a saint isn’t easy, and neither is this film; at nearly three hours, A Hidden Life can be slow going. But its goal is honorable and its heart is pure.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Dec. 20, at Landmark E Street Cinema and Landmark Bethesda Row. $12.50.
UNCUT GEMS
Take the typical Adam Sandler man-child character — obnoxious, mistake-prone, self-destructive — and throw him into a hard-boiled drama; that’s what you’ve got with the nail-biting latest from brothers Josh and Benny Safdie. Set in Manhattan’s Diamond District, it’s an anxiety dream that lasts more than two hours and will more than likely leave you in a cold sweat. It’s also one of the best movies of the year.
The Saturday Night Live veteran stars as jewelry dealer Howard Ratner, who’s on the verge of a once-in-a-lifetime score: a rare black opal, uncut and multicolored and seemingly a talisman. Ratner is acting as a middleman to get the precious gem to auction, but he can’t help but show it off to clients like Boston Celtic center Kevin Garnett (playing himself), who thinks the magical rock can help him win big games. What’s the harm if Howard lends it to Garnett, as long as he promises to bring it back in time to take it to Sotheby’s?
Of course, everything goes wrong; Ratner is an incurable shyster who inevitably runs afoul of organized crime heavies ready to break his legs if he doesn’t pay up his gambling debts. And that’s not all — he’s carrying on with his young employee Julia (Julia Fox), and his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) is ready to divorce him any day now. Ratner is a terrible person, but Sandler somehow makes you want the brute to change his ways, which you know he won’t; he’s an Adam Sander character, after all.
This is a breakout for Sandler, if not entirely an outlier. The actor moved up from late-night television to anchor a cottage industry of lowbrow comedies like Jack and Jill and That’s My Boy. Yet Sandler’s comedy, back to his 1993 CD They’re All Gonna Laugh at You! (its title taken not from a mother’s encouragement but from a sadistic taunt), has long been fueled by a self-loathing anger. That deep-seated emotion comes through his slapstick in fits and starts, but few directors have seen fit to tap that energy for drama. Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 drama Punch-Drunk Love gave Sandler a heartbreaking showcase, but it was such a box office flop relative to his bread-and-butter throwaways that he has seldom repeated the experiment. The Safdies spent nearly a decade trying to coax Sandler to play Ratner, and the result is a career-topper.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Wednesday, Dec. 25, at area theaters.
LITTLE WOMEN
With crucial scenes taking place around Christmas, Louisa May Alcott’s frequently adapted novel ought to make a perfect holiday movie. Actress Greta Gerwig — whose 2017 feature debut as a director, Lady Bird, was a terrific coming-of-age movie — has taken on the perennial favorite with a fresh eye. But the results are a mixed blessing.
Gerwig’s screenplay jumbles the book’s linear chronology, switching back and forth in time in the manner of a Quentin Tarantino movie, but without the carnage. This Little Women starts in the middle of the story, introducing its central figure as a writer when the adult Jo (Saorise Ronan) brings a short story to publisher Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts). This sets up a narrative of Jo fighting against a system that’s unfair to women — timely enough, but the complicated structure doesn’t do much for character development.
Shifting quickly among different locations, with the characters at different ages, is effective in evoking the passage of time, as when a grown-up Jo walks from the train station to her family home, past weathered mainstreet businesses. When the scene switches to her childhood, the same businesses look more fresh and inviting, the blush of youth more promising.
On the other hand, other sequences can switch too quickly, representing Jo at wildly different ages in a matter of a few minutes. Such quick cutting gets at some of the familiar story’s greatest hits (Jo drastically cutting her long hair, for instance), but one doesn’t get a sense of these much-beloved characters forming their personalities over time.
The timeline can be particularly confusing if you aren’t familiar with the source, so it helps to watch with someone who knows other versions of Little Women and can explain how well this cast matches with its characters. My wife and her mother were helpful in this regard, afterward explaining to me that Laura Dern was a surprisingly good Marmee; that Ronan transformed Jo from a more likable character to an angrier one; and that her friendship with her sister Beth (Eliza Scanlen), a key relationship in the original story, barely registers here. The film has been getting generally favorable reviews, but its shifting focus isn’t entirely successful, whether you know the book or not.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Wednesday, Dec. 25, at area theaters.
PATRICK
Voyeuristic curiosity might draw one to movies set in a nudist colony, but the novelty generally grows old fast. While director Doris Wishman’s 1961 cheapie Nude on the Moon — which imagines space travel landing us on a clothing-optional planet — has its B-movie charms, the 1965 documentary The Raw Ones doesn’t earn its lurid title. Yet for discerning viewers who want compelling narrative to go along with their anthropological observation, this new Belgian comedy-drama from director Tim Mielants is a good fit.
Patrick (Kevin Janssens) is a middle-aged handyman working at the nudist camp run by his elderly parents. Campgoers of all ages and sizes enjoy being completely nude, but the self-conscious Patrick likes to keep a shirt on, kind of like Porky Pig when you think about it. When Patrick’s father dies after a long illness, the camp’s regulars plot to take over, and it’s time for Patrick to find his voice and assert himself. Instead, he’s obsessed with the loss of an expensive (and bluntly metaphorical) hammer.
Nobody plays volleyball in Patrick, and if early scenes seem like a low-key exploitation movie, the plot plays out much like any other quirky drama once you get used to the sea of human flesh. Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) has a funny supporting role as a pop star whom nobody at the camp seems to recognize. But the movie belongs to Janssens, who treats his character with as much dignity as can be afforded someone who walks around wearing only a shirt. This is the closing-night film for this year’s European Union Showcase at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, and if it’s not a conventional crowd-pleaser, it’s the kind of offbeat title that makes the festival one of the season’s greatest gifts to area movie lovers.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m. (with post-screening cocktail reception) and Sunday, Dec. 22, at 5:35 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
THE HOLLY AND THE IVY
As the old Christmas carol goes, holly may be one of the colorful mainstays of a traditional holiday, but it also “bears a prickle” — and so does this outstanding British drama from 1952. The movie begins like many a seasonal favorite, as scattered family members return home for the holiday. But this reunion turns out to be more along the fraught lines of Harold Pinter’s wickedly funny The Homecoming.
The Rev. Martin Gregory (Ralph Richardson) is getting on in years. After the death of his wife, the aging parson has come under the care of his dutiful daughter Jenny (Celia Johnson). As Christmas approaches, the reverend’s children flock home to his country estate, but all is not well. His youngest, Margaret (Margaret Leighton), has a drinking problem, but her siblings don’t bother to tell their father, assuming he wouldn’t listen; after all, he’s always been more attentive to his congregation than to his own children. Things come to a head on Christmas Eve, but will the spirit of the season win out?
Despite a first act that plays like fairly benign nostalgia, The Holly and the Ivy — adapted from Wynyard Browne’s play Hobson’s Choice — is a serious, thoughtful study of a family that has long felt neglected by its patriarch. Richardson and Leighton frequently worked together in this period, and director George More O’Ferrall (The Heart of the Matter) coaxed his actors with a signature English restraint that lets emotions simmer until they finally boil over. The drama resolves a little too easily, but this lesser-known Christmas drama belongs in the upper echelon of December classics.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, Dec. 22, at 7 p.m. (with an introduction by and book event with Jeremy Arnold, author of Christmas in the Movies) and Monday, Dec. 23, at 4:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
CASE FOR THE NEW HANGMAN
While moviegoers flock to the newest Little Women for the holidays, this weekend the National Gallery of Art presents a very different adaptation of classic literature. In this 1970 mystery, director Pavel Juráček adapted part three of Gulliver’s Travels. This Gulliver (played by prolific actor Lubomír Kostelka) gets caught up in a series of mishaps after his car breaks down. The gallery describes the film as “a sci-fi journey through socialist Czechoslovakia” in which “the confining borders, polluted landscapes, perverted justice, and public surveillance of a socialist land transform into an unsettling new world.“
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, Dec. 21, at 11:30 a.m. at the National Gallery of Art in the West Building Lecture Hall. Free.
FANTASTIC PLANET
Next week the Washington Psychotronic Film Society will screen an animated classic that was originally released around Christmastime 1973. However, this French-Czech co-production doesn’t exactly offer visions of sugar plum fairies. Adapting a novel by Stefan Wul, director René Laloux tells the story of a distant planet ruled by blue giants who oppress their humanoid subjects. But rebellion is afoot. The Washington Post’s Tom Shales wrote that the film “creates and sustains a consistent and affecting artificial universe that can be both eerie and amusing.”
Watch the trailer.
Monday, Dec. 23, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
I just loved seeing Eddie Murphy back on SNL the other day. Jimmy Fallon introduced him. The two of them are great together. I guess it must be because of Eddie Murphy’s new movie, Dolemight Is My Name.