Saving Mr Banks

Because Saving Mr Banks is a Disney production, Walt is played by Tom Hanks instead of Joe Pesci. And very well too, continuing from Captain Phillips Hanks’s personification of decency under duress.

Peel back the layers. 

(i) The film is about how the Mary Poppins film came to be made, how Disney had to overcome the arch prejudices of the source novelist Pamela Travers (marvelous Emma Thompson). We also get a glimpse into the creation process, as a team concocts a musical one tune at a time, bar by bar, yet the team still purveys a very personal vision.

(ii) The film is about how the novel came to be composed, how the story — much bleaker both in plot and heroine than the original film — grew out of the author’s life and needs. Flashbacks to Travers’ childhood and her bittersweet relationship with her drunken irresponsible and doomed dreamer father discover the sources of the adult woman’s aversions to red and to pears. More importantly, it reveals her unconscious need to redeem her father and to forgive her own childhood failure to save him. As we’ve often been told, art is how the artist works out personal neuroses. As Disney teaches Travers, art enables us too change our story, to see our past influences whole rather than in a limited, specific part, and to learn to forgive, ourselves as well as others. Disney’s clue into Travers’ fictionalizing of herself lies in discovering her pen-name. She is a story as much as she tells one. Thus this plot broadens from saving the children to saving Mr Banks — to saving Pamela Travers.

(iii) That represents Disney too, as he reveals his own harsh and traumatic childhood and a cruel father he has learned to respect and love. So this film is a justification of the Disney canon, saving it from charges of unreal cheer. From the beginning the Disney classics were far from the escapist romances we dismiss them as. Rather like the profound fairy tales  on which they often drew, they took on the eternal realities of death, loss, helplessness, even the first stirrings of sexuality and adult experience. That’s the spoonful of medicine that makes the sugar go up. The best primer on classic Disney remains Bruno Bettelheim The Uses of Enchantment.

If the film is a Disneyfication of the Walt-Pamela clash of wills, it’s also a reminder of the psychological depth and serious purpose of the best Disney films (among which this should be securely numbered). When Disney seats Travers on the merry-go-round he unwittingly connects to her childhood memories of her romanticizing father’s white nag and its harness of his fantasies. Disney’s genius lay in his intuitive ability to treat weighty themes in tones both bright and light. Against all odds, by getting a proper read on Ms Travers’ persona Mr Disney does manage to turn the curmudgeon into the “cavorting and twinkling” into which she dreaded he would convert her Mary Poppins. Hollywood, after all, is jasmine as much as it is her “chlorine, and sweat.”   

American Hustle

With American Hustle David Russell counters F. Scott Fitzgerald’s claim that in America there are no second acts. His major characters live out the American Dream that people can reinvent themselves, sometimes over and over, to the point that deceiving others can lead to their self-deception. This fictionalized version of the Abscam sting reveals a world of Sammy Glicks. This is America as hustler.

The opening scene establishes the theme of deceptive appearance. Irving Rosenfeld (an himself transformed Christian Bale) laboriously engineers a pathetic comb-over. After this ridiculous introduction he grows into a very sympathetic character. Despite the range of his criminal enterprises, he cares for his adopted son, he’s smart enough to fall for the smart con-woman Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and he has the conscience to try to save his new friend, the mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). The film redefines Irving from ridiculous to admirable — albeit within the parameters of self-serving fraud. Even at his worst — preying on the desperate by commanding a five grand fee for the futile attempt to secure them a much larger loan — he remains more sympathetic than the greed-driven and impersonal banks of America. (For that egregious sterility there is no comb-over.)
      And the amoral but righteous FBI agent who exploits him. Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) is a working class loser with violent tendencies who goes manic trying to advance his career. Where Irving and Sydney remember who they are DiMaso fools himself through the schemes and deceptions he tries to command. His vanity and ambition are baser than Irving’s and Sydney’s desire to rise out of their limited origins. As Irving says, “Did you ever have to find a way to survive and you knew your choices were bad, but you had to survive?” We’re satisfied that the lovers win and DiMaso loses. Irving and Sydney meet and first connect over their shared love of a blues song, but one without words, Ellington’s Jeep’s Blues. In the con’s world words are less reliable than music.

DiMaso’s vanity and superficiality (as in his curling his hair) align with Irving’s wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence, reinventing herself a world away from her Hunger Games competence). Where Irving and Sydney remake themselves “from the feet up,” i.e., intensely and completely, Rosalyn only remakes her image. She spends all her time doing her hair and her nails and frying under the sunlamp. Her rationalization of her betrayal of Irving is a transparent self-deception. At the end she achieves what she had refused — divorcing Irving — and settles in with a supposedly more devoted lover, the second-line mafiosa. At the end Irving and Sydney rewrite themselves again, as a couple, as parents of Rosalyn’s son, and professionally legitimated as owners of — an art gallery, where the themes of crooked dealing, exploitation and the sale of an image over reality are likely to be renewed.

Russell’s interest is as usual primarily in his characters. The complexities of the snaking plot work to     reveal the characters’ depths and discoveries. As in Silver Linings Playbook he uncovers love in the most unlikely characters, who find a mutual refuge against a dangerous cold world. In a comic replay of the major characters’ self-reinvention, the fake wealthy sheik is a Mexican who as it happens learned enough Arabic to get by the scrutiny of the Mafia head Tellegio (Robert DeNiro, reinventing himself as his earlier gangster invention).

Like the intriguing characters in their various stings, Mayor Polito has made a political career out of hustling -- albeit for his constituents. The FBI here is itself implicated in the crooked hustle when DiMaso coerces our two chief cons into working for him, to con for the government. In the FBI there is one solid man of conscience and principle, played by the inveterate schnook Louis CK, when all his colleagues and superiors espouse the con. In an America that is all hustle, it is still possible for an honest person to survive, however beaten and betrayed — and for hustlers to define their own integrity.

Nebraska

As you may (or may not) infer, the subject of Nebraska may well be Nebraska. In particular, the collision between the two connotations of the state that make it a useful emblem for current America as a whole.

Or as a hole. The black and white wide screen photography expresses the state’s openness. The space isolates its inhabitants and embodies the bleakness of its mundane lives — but director Alexander Payne finds a remnant beauty there still. There’s a tension between the vastness of the space and the narrowness of its characters’ lives. Hence the Hawthorne, Nebraska, Grant family scenes, glued brain-dead to the TV, their terse conversations proof that these still waters run shallow. 

Despite all that emptiness Nebraska is also known for the remarkable volume and variety of celebrities it has produced. Not just dolts like L. Ron Hubbard, Dick Cheney and Gerald Ford but national icons like Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, the Astaires, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda, Hoot Gibson, Harold Lloyd, Nick Nolte, Robert Taylor, Darryl Zanuck  — and yes, that brilliant film director Alexander Payne. Not to mention the jocks like Grover Cleveland Alexander, Max Baer, Bob Gibson, Frank Leahy, Andy Roddick, Gale Sayers and of course especially Gorgeous George. That’s an impressive — and disproportionate — amount of stardom for a state defined by emptiness. 

From such an unpromising landscape, such success has arisen. That, in a nutshell, is the American Dream, which promises that a magnificent life can be achieved there through hard work and freedom. As wife Kate (June Squibb) contends, 

I never knew the son of a bitch even wanted to be a millionaire! He should have thought about that years ago and worked                         for it!.

But he didn’t. Instead a Publishers House Clearance-type of come-on seduces him into another surviving myth, American exceptionalism. Without any effort on his part, for no reason, Woody believes he has won a million dollars. His certainty wards off everyone else’s logic and argument. Woody’s stubbornness, Alzheimerian obliviousness to reality, and sense of personal due effectively represents the Tea Party Republican’s delusion of a long-past power and authority. The bar-room losers want to believe his delusion because they have no meaning in their own lives. Note the total absence of children in this film -- except for the Hawthorne photographer.  

The film also satirizes that party’s ostensible support of traditional family values. The Grants are not especially close. They bristle with envy, dislike, resentment. The two hick cousins gloat over how long it took the fancy pants David (Will Forte) to drive in from Billings, Montana. They will later mug Woody and David to steal the winning ticket. Yet they sustain the pretence of closeness and pleasure at Woody’s supposed windfall. His old partner Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach) shows that a longtime business partner and close friend can be as mean, destructive and untrustworthy as family. He stole Woody’s air compressor and tried to get into Kate’s bloomers.

Woody finally does realize his dream, a new truck and an air compressor. But they come from the filial generosity of David, not from some miraculous lottery. David is the less successful son, just now losing his girl friend, selling home theatres for a living, where the married Ross (Bob Odenkirk) is being promoted to anchor on the local TV news show. Woody’s dream is realized by his more modest, realistic son, not the one with the better image. This contrast is implicit when Woody urges the on-the-wagon David to “Have a drink with your old man. Be somebody!” It’s David who stands by Woody, attends his humiliation in the bar and punches out Pegram. Even more generous than trading his Subaru for a truck in Woody’s name, David ducks out of sight for Woody’s triumphant last drive out of Lincoln.

We share David’s gradual discovery that there is more value in Woody than meets the judgmental eye. This jaw-droppingly stupid old alkie used to be a very good man, capable, attractive, whose generous nature was constantly exploited by his family and friends. As now they all try to again. Down in his luck and out of his mind, all he can do is doggedly plod on towards his delusion. As David learns at the lottery office, Woody is not unique. There are other mad old dreamers like him, possibly some in higher places.   

David gains some insight into his father from Woody’s old girlfriend Peg (Angela McEwan), who now runs her dead husband’s newspaper. Clearly an attractive, sensible woman, she was attracted to Woody and cares for him still. There’s a distinct wistfulness when she sees him driving away. But she lost him to Kate by refusing to let him round the bases with her. Kate was not so restrained so won the husband she now suffers and berates. But her love is evidenced when she tenderly kisses the comatose man in the hospital.    

What makes Kate the film’s most compelling and positive character is her earthy realism.  There are no airs or delusions about her. She did what she had to to win Woody and she does what she must to preserve him. That no-nonsense realism is confirmed when she flashes at a suitor’s grave “what you could have had if you hadn’t kept talking about grain” and when she gives her inlaws her climactic instruction (“Go — yourselves”). She liked Woody’s little sister Rose, “but my god, she was a slut.” Kate refuses to honey coat reality. Indeed David is often embarrassed by his mother’s earthy candour:

— Jesus Mom! Was the whole town trying to seduce you?

— These boys grow up staring at the rear ends of cows and pigs, it's only natural that a real woman will get them chafing their pants. 

     Not just a real woman, Kate is a real Nebraskan, a real American. She is the honest and positive alternative to the Republicans’ moral pretensions.  The couple who congratulate Woody in the restaurant, the one friendly friend he meets in the street and the couple from whom the sons steal the first compressor have a generosity of spirit but they lack Kate's candour. Her realism is the bracing model for her corrupt inlaws and her country in its present state.

On Our Merry Way (1948)

You never know what gems the vaults will deliver. The 1948 musical comedy On Our Merry Way has a self-reflexivity 60 years ahead of its time.

Coproducer Burgess Meredith stars as Oliver Pease, who writes the lost pet want ads in the city daily. But he has told lovely wife Martha (Paulette Godard) that he’s the paper’s star Roving Reporter, who canvases the citizenry for responses to inane questions. Impatient, she urges him to seek a raise by posing a more adventurous question: “Has a little child ever changed your life?” To rise to her expectations Oliver has to evade a thug bent on bashing him over gambling debts and fool the editor into letting him write the column on Martha’s question.

That plot string ties the three subplots together, on various forms of a “baby.” In one two roving conmen (Fred Macmurray, William Demarest) are trapped by the evil 10-year-old they hope to return home for a cash reward.  Shades of O. Henry’s “Ransom of Red Chief.” The brat’s older sister is the only sane, competent member of the family, including the crazed bank manager uncle. 

In another a spoiled rotten child star is shown her selfish ways and atones by boosting the careers of a washed-up old actor (Victor Moore) and a pretty starlet who blossoms when she dons a sarong. The starlet is Dorothy Lamour, who performs a spirited parody of her usual musical (and saronged) numbers.

In the best episode (directed by uncredited John Huston and George Stevens) Henry Fonda and James Stewart star as broke swing bandleaders who set up a rigged talent contest to get the money to fix their bus. Their plan is torpedoed when their mechanic’s daughter, Baby, turns out to be a hot beauty who blows every mean horn, impressing judge Harry James. The two leads have a charming ease together that supports the very broad comedy. In their happy ending the Babe takes over their band, the bus mobile again, but she invites them to stay.

The main plot works round to a happy ending too. The editor brings Pease a job offer just as their furniture is being repossessed. Martha reveals the reason behind her suggested question: She’s expecting a baby. As it turns out, the looming baby — through its mother’s initiative — has transformed the daddy from a duplicitous loser into a sensitive, effective reporter. More than a child affecting the plots, that other secondary type, the woman, is the motive force that in each story is responsible for the success. Martha has been on to Oliver all along.
     In addition to that irony and the recurring parody, the film also provides that rarity, the actor’s direct address to the viewer. Meredith’s Oliver confides to the audience that he has lied to his wife, that he’s going to come clean even if her loses her, and defines us as companions on his adventure. This is not a great movie but it is a knowing one, enjoying the liberties it takes with the studio film conventions. John Ohara and Arch Oboler had a hand in the stories.
     Of course the film is not unique in its self-referentiality, just fresh. Groucho's indiscreet asides, the Crosby/Hope Road flicks (saronged Lamour obligatory), the larks of Olsen and Johnson, all enjoyed this frisk with conventions. In fact that goes back to Thomas Nashe writing Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592) for the frisson of Will Somer's performance, The invention long preceded the theory. 

Philomena: CALL Discussion Notes

Philomena 

Directed by Stephen Frears

The film is based on a true story and the book about it. Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) is a former British journalist who has been scapegoated in a scandal in the Tony Blair government, for whom he was a spin doctor. At loose ends, he thinks of retreating into Russian history until he becomes engaged in an elderly Irish woman’s personal history. Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) has after a 50-year silence told her daughter that as a girl she bore an illegitimate son, whom the convent forced her to give up for adoption. She now wants to find him. As he condescendingly tracks down this “human interest” story Sixsmith discovers that the convent itself burned its records in a bonfire, that it used to sell its children to American adopters at $1,000 a head, and that while the convent and British adoption agencies won’t/can’t help her, American agencies can. On his publisher’s shilling Martin and Philomena go to Washington where Martin discovers her son Anthony lived under a new name, that he became a prominent counsel in both the Reagan and Bush administrations, and that he dies of AIDS. They interview Anthony’s adoptive sister Mary (Mare Winningham) and eventually overcome the resistance of Anthony’s lover Pete (Peter Hermann). Pete tells them he took the stricken Anthony back to Ireland and the convent hoping to find his mother but the Church prevented the reunion. Pete honoured Anthony’s deathbed request and had him buried on the convent grounds.

Questions:

1. The film opens on Martin’s medical examination, where he is found physically sound but depressed. How does the ensuing plot diagnose and treat his mental, emotional or spiritual state? How is Philomena’s quest also his?

2. How does the doctor compare/contrast to the priests?

3. What’s the point of Martin’s “I’ve been running”?

4. The fact that the woman’s name actually is Philomena doesn’t preclude its thematic reading. What does the name connote? (Hint: ‘philo’ means love, not just a mis-spelled flaky pastry shell.) There’s also the potential of “mean.” And what is her antithesis, Sister Hildy, on "guard" against?

5. What does the film say about the Catholic church? Don’t ignore the kindness of Sister Annunciata (the sympathetic photographer). Does Philomena’s faith or Martin’s doubt provide the better life support?

6. In the confessional scene how does the priest’s “God will forgive you” reflect on the convent?

7. Why does Philomena flee that scene?

8. Compare what we see of Philomena’s current family with what we see of Martin’s. How do we read the difference?

9. Why does sister Mary look so much like the aged Sister Hildegarde? Thin lips, anemic complexion, bitterness, anger — in context, what does that tell us?

10. As old Hildegarde, Barbara Jefford delivers a harsh explanation for the church’s cruelty towards its young mothers and their children. Jefford’s first great screen monologue was Molly Bloom’s famous Yes monologue in Joseph Strick’s film of 11. Joyce’s Ulysses (1967). What is the thematic effect of that echo in the casting?

12. Why is our last view of the convent grounds a shot of evergreens covered in frost/snow?

13. In their confrontation scene how is old Hildegarde a reflection of Martin and/or a contrast to Philomena? How does the sputtering priest there contrast to the priest in the confessional scene?

14. How does Frears treat the changes in the convent — the modern manager in mufti, (Sister Claire), the black woman, the new apparent openness?

15. What’s the point in Martin’s changing perspective on Philomena? Consider his disdain for her literary tastes, for example.

16. In Martin we see a political issue turn into a personal one. How does the personal story turn into different political issues for (i) Philomena, and (ii) Anthony?

13. Why are Martin and Philomena so often at odds, e.g., whether to stay in the US, whether to publish or not, whether to badger/quit Peter?

14. How does Martin’s “Evil is good” work to reflect his differences from Philomena? His relation to Hildegarde? The relationship between politics/journalism and the church?

15. Are there any thematic possibilities in the doctor’s “Your stool is outstanding”?

16. Why would someone (e.g., I) say Martin “retreated” into Russian history?

17. Why do they fly business class and stay in a fancy hotel buffet breakfast included?

18. What’s the point of the duo’s visit to the Lincoln memorial?
19. Why does Martin fumble over Janes Russell and Mansfield and "both their really big ones" in his scene with Sister Clare? 

20. The faithful Philomena waits for a sign. The skeptic Martin finds one: the Celtic harp on the Guinness glass and on Anthony’s lapel. So? Does this argue for the religious or the secular?

21. In the slavery in the convent's laundry, how does the rigorous cleanliness end up expressing the sordid? Again, a fact can be a metaphor.