Portrait of a Lady on Fire

First Hit: The film was a slow evolution and stretched at times, but also it was an engaging story about slow smoldering love.

From the opening moments after Marianne (Noemie Merlant) lands on the island and treks up to a large stately home and is greeted by the housekeeper Sophie (Luana Bajrami), we know this is going to unfold slowly.

The premise is that Marianne is there to secretly paint Heloise (Adele Haenel) who has been pulled out of a convent, where she wanted to be, by her mother, La Comtesse (Valeria Golino). Heloise is to take her sister’s place in a marriage to a man in Milan, Italy. Her sister committed suicide. The painting is to be sent to the perspective suiter.

To secretly paint Heloise, La Comtesse has told Heloise that Marianne is there to be her companion for walks. On their strolls, Heloise is brooding, inquisitive, and sullen. But the audience knows there is something deeper brewing.

The side story with Sophie being pregnant and wanting an abortion is well done. The moment she subjects herself to a procedure in a home, with a baby by her side is enormously powerful and thought-provoking.

The lighting and sets are both stark and dark but they create a beautiful space for love to flourish.

Merlant is terrific and compelling as the artist whose job it is to capture the essence and beauty of Heloise. Hanel is a smolderingly sublime reflection of beauty in this role. As a woman who is slowly falling in love, she is perfect. Bajrami is divine as the pregnant housekeeper. The scene, as described above, is very emotional. Celine Sciamma wrote and directed this film and it felt as though it came from her heart.

Overall: I loved the story, but I felt it took too long to develop.

A Hidden Life

First Hit: A long and beautifully shot study about how one man wouldn’t compromise his beliefs.

Terrence Malick creates and makes statements in his films. Often, the films are long, always beautifully shot, and require the audience to think about the point he’s making.

In this movie, the focus is on living and acting on your beliefs. Franz Jagerstatter (August Diehl) was profoundly religious and had a personal relationship with his idea of God,  Christ, and what was right and wrong. He was faithful to the Catholic church in his tiny Austrian hillside village, called St. Radegund. As part of his commitment to the church performed duties at the church almost every day.

Married to Franziska, Fani (Valerie Pachner), they began their life together, farming and then having two children. They farmed their land by hand and were an integral part of their small community. During harvest season, the community worked together to bring in and store the harvested crops. The town felt like it was a long way from the war that Hitler was bringing to the world. However, when the war started turning against Hitler, the army drafted all eligible men to serve the Third Reich. This included Franz.

A requirement for serving the German Army was to sign a pledge of allegiance to Hitler and the German government. Franz couldn’t do this. He could not live with himself if he signed something that was against what he believed, and after the army attempted to persuade him with physical and verbal abuse, they threw him in jail. The German officers even solicited the assistance of his local priest to convince him to sign the oath of loyalty. In essence, the priest was saying that God would overlook his signing the document to save his own life and the life of his family.

He couldn’t and wouldn’t sign the oath and therefore spent years in jail. But Franz wasn’t the only one who paid the price, so did Fani. In scenes back in the village, Fani and the girls are depicted being shunned by almost everyone in the village because her husband Franz was giving their town a bad name in the eyes of ruling Germany.

The film spends time going back and forth between Franz in prison being harassed and beaten into signing a loyalty oath and the village where Fani and the girls were continuing to be harassed by the people in her town.

The immense pressure building up in Franz didn’t break him down and his wife, despite the immense movement to ostracize her and the girls, continued to support him and his decision despite what she was going through.

This film shows the cruelty of people when someone stands up for their beliefs. Because the people, including the priest, are unwilling to stand for their true feelings, they make Franz and Fani the enemy.

The physical beauty of the area of the village was well captured by the cinematographer. The integration of archival footage of Adolf Hitler and the huge parades he commanded was well done.

Diehl was terrific as Franz. His ability to show his internal struggle in a contained, in prison, way was perfect. Pacher was sublime. Her looks of intensity and passion towards other characters , amazing. Michael Nyqvist’s performance as the local Bishop that tried to persuade Franz to sign the document was excellent. Alexander Radszun’s performance as the judge that sentenced Franz to death was very good. You could see that he understood and struggled but had to follow his own loyalty oath. Malick wrote a script that was too long. I think the film could have had a stronger impact if it was more crisp in its presentation.

Overall: Long and pretty, it needed to be tightened up to make its point even stronger.

Little Women

First Hit: I liked the theme of women being strong and independent and disliked the jarring time shifts.

I’ve made no bones about Saoirse Ronan is one of the very best actors in her generation and in film today. Here as Jo March, the oldest of the four sisters, she is the focus of this story and therefore, we see this story through her eyes.

She has three sisters Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh), and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). Each of the sisters has talent. Meg is an actress and in early scenes, she and her sisters are shown making a play together and Meg has the lead role. Amy is a painter and she aspires to be the best and ultimate painter alive. Beth is the youngest, is shy and more unassuming, but plays piano like she was born with one in her soul.

The girls are being raised by their mother, Marmee (Laura Dern). She’s alone as her husband, and the girl’s dad is away fighting the civil war. They live in a large home but because the father is away and cannot provide for them, money is tight which is part of the drive for some of the girls, especially Jo, to provide for themselves as they get older. They don’t want to be dependent on men.

As a strong independent young woman, Jo wants to make her living and livelihood from the stories she writes. She thinks the way women are treated and the limits put on women to be independent is absurd. There are numerous scenes where this plays out. One such scene is when she’s attempting to sell a story and the publisher/editor tells her the girl in the story has to marry and be happy in the end; that’s the only way people will accept the story. This infuriates Jo.

Jo is also stubborn, as shown in a couple of brief scenes. One such scene is when she is in New York to make her living as a writer, meets a handsome writing professor, and asks him to honestly critique her work. He thoughtfully does this, and the criticism stings, so she calls him inept and storms out of the room, blaming him for lack of thoughtfulness.

There are many acts where her feminism and stubbornness play out, and they are wonderfully done.

Meg is different in that she wants to marry. She wants to create a household with children. This is a source of disappointment for Jo; however, it also is a way for Jo to see and accept that people are different from her.

Amy is like Jo in many ways in that she wants to be the best and known for being the best. However, in a scene of self-actualization, she realizes that her perfectionist painting technique is outstanding, but she doesn’t create anything unique and probably will never be the painter she envisioned herself to be. I really liked this about Amy because the actualization was subtle yet very clear and it came through in her expression.

Beth was quiet and meekest of the sisters; however, her piano playing was extraordinary. Her weakness was that she didn’t like playing in front of anyone. She was also the weakest of the sisters physically and we watch her demise through catching scarlet fever.

All this to say, I loved each of the sister’s stories. I thought each of them was superbly acted as well. What hurt this film was the sometimes-jarring way we segued into other time frames. Watching a particular segment of a sister’s story and then boom, we find ourselves with that person in some different storyline. Sometimes it made sense and other times it was too obscure at the time to be an addition to the story or the particular sister. With the type of time jumps this film presents it is difficult to tell if they were future or past events because the actors never looked older or younger in the scenes. I just don’t think the audience needs to be trying to figure out when the previous scene happened in the overall storyline.

One particular scene when Jo cut her hair for money for the family, we see her in subsequent stages with long or short hair but the storyline at one point meant that she should have had short hair but it was long and bunched up in the back.

It also appeared that men were only used as place holders and role players to propel the sister’s stories, and this isn’t a bad thing and it came across as a bit too obvious.

Ronan was powerful as Jo. The fault I found with the film was the time jumps that diminished the storyline and had nothing to do with her performance. Watson was wonderfully elegant yet showed a side of fun and enthusiasm as well. The scene where part of her hair gets burnt off and later the vulnerable elegance of her coming down the stairs in a coming-out event showed the breadth of her abilities in this role. Pugh was the surprising actor for me. She was sublime in this role, and when she was on the screen, her look alone commanded you watch her. The moment that Amy realizes she won’t be a famous painter was genuinely inspirational. Scanlen was beautiful as the meekest of the sisters although she harbored some of the biggest talents in the family. Dern was terrific as the mother who’s compassion for others rang throughout the movie. I loved her scene with Jo when discussing patience and anger. Timothee Chalamet as Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence was sharp. As the rich boy neighbor who had fallen in love with Jo because of her strength and independence, he was sufficiently arrogant, boisterous, and kind. Chris Cooper as Laurie’s father Mr. Laurence, was excellent. His thoughtful kindness as the rich neighbor was well placed throughout the film. Meryl Street gave an outstanding and funny performance as the arrogant, very wealthy Aunt to the sisters. Her well placed and pointed jabs at women having careers were perfect. Greta Gerwig wrote and directed this film. I didn’t like her choice to make time jumps without giving the audience clues about the past and future. The actors never really looked different in these time sequences and that was bothersome. Otherwise, she got excellent performances from the actors and the sets and scenes were beautifully filmed.

Overall: A terrific film interrupted by time jumps that caused confusion.

Marriage Story

First Hit: Well-acted story about a challenging process that many people go through — divorce.

This is a story about Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), who met in Los Angeles and moved to New York City, where Charlie was living. They got married, worked together in Charlie’s theater company, and had a young child, a boy named Henry (Azhy Robertson).

Over time, the story has Nicole becoming lost in Charlie’s shadow. Although she is the star of all his stage productions, she feels overshadowed. She’s also a long way from her LA family and her family home. Her mother and father were in show business, and before meeting Charlie, Nicole had received some fame for one of her television appearances.

As they contemplate the divorce, there seems to be an unspoken agreement that they will do this amicably. It is spoken that they both want the best for Henry and that both want to be involved in raising Henry.

During the opening scenes showing each of them in brief scenes while a voiceover has each of them stating what they like, love, or struggle with the other person. As the scene unfolds into a current moment, they are both sitting in front of a marriage counselor mediator. Each of them has been asked to read these statements about the other. Charlie is ready willing and able; Nicole is not and storms out of the office.

This made me wonder about some other underlying cause of her wanting to end the marriage. We do learn later that Charlie had a one-time affair with one of the people in his theater company.

The film takes a journey across the US from New York City to Los Angeles, where Nicole and Henry visit her mother. She has decided to stay there, despite her acting in the couples’ latest play heading to Broadway.

Charlie travels out to visit Henry. While in LA, he learns that Nicole has seen an aggressive attorney Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern), who is pushing to make this divorce contentious. When he’s served with divorce papers, he feels blindsided. To protect his interests, Charlie engages a Los Angeles lawyer, Jay Marotta (Ray Liotta), who wants a $25K retainer to come up with a plan to make sure Charlie gets his son Harry in New York.

However, the aggressiveness of the whole thing turns Charlie off, so he engages a new, more passive attorney Bert Spitz (Alan Alda). During a discussion with Nicole and Nora, Charlie realizes things are out of control for him.

The film then moves to tell what happens to Charlie and Nicole as they go through the divorce court process and the subsequent fallout. A touching scene towards the end shows Henry reading Nicole’s list of traits to Charlie, and Nicole is standing near the door listening in. Very touching.

Driver is excellent as Charlie. The scene in the bar when he’s singing to his theater company employees was wonderfully staged and felt very real. Johansson was terrific as Nicole. I felt as though she captured questioning being swallowed up in Charlie’s life well. Robertson, as Henry, was enjoyable as Charlie and Nicole’s child. Dern was strong as an attorney who wanted her client to win on all counts. Alda was okay as the passive attorney who tried to weave the least obstructive way through the divorce. Liotta was powerful as Charlie’s aggressive attorney. Noah Baumbach wrote and directed this sensitive and sophisticated look at divorce.

Overall: This film touched many divorce subjects and implications both sensitively and effectively.

Waves

First Hit: I’m not always a fan of revolving cameras and frame sizing to create a feeling, but this time it worked.

In an opening scene, Alexis (Alexa Demie) and Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) are driving in a car. They are young, the music is blaring, and they are drunk on their love for each other and being young and alive. The camera keeps going in circles creating a feeling of erratic motion, and that something is going to happen. I kept holding on to my armrest thinking that an accident was coming soon. It didn’t.

This opening scene gave me a sense that the film was going to be a roller coaster of feelings because of all the joy in this scene and the spirit of impending doom riding in the background.

Tyler lives with his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), his stepmother Catharine (Renee Elise Goldsberry), and sister Emily (Taylor Russell). They are clearly middle class, and as a black man Ronald is very proud of his work ethic, what he’s achieved, and makes a point of instilling his driven work ethic in his children.

Tyler is on the wrestling team in high school. Ronald is very engaged with his son’s wrestling. He works with Tyler by practicing wrestling moves in their garage. He pushes him to be the best wrestler on the team. They not only practice wrestling moves in their garage; they also lift weights together, and they challenge each other while working out and wrestling. In one telling scene during a school wrestling match, after Tyler pins his opponent for a win, his father tells him if he would have made different moves, he would have pinned his opponent 20 seconds sooner.

So it wasn’t only about the win, but how fast and what moves Tyler performed in each match that was challenged by Ronald. What Ronald doesn’t know is that Tyler is hiding a shoulder injury from everyone, and the doctor is quite clear that the injury is so severe that he’ll have permanent damage if he continues to wrestle.

Tyler likes to party with his friends and is very popular at school. He and his girlfriend Alexis spend a lot of time together and are sexually active. During one text message exchange, she tells him her period’s late.

As the film proceeds, the pressure is building up in Tyler; his father is riding him to be better, his shoulder is irreparably damaged, which could cause him to lose his college scholarship, and his girlfriend is pregnant. His drinking is getting worse, he’s smoking more pot, and taking lots of pain pills. His life is spinning out of control.

When Tyler and Alexis go to the abortion clinic, she changes her mind and says she wants to keep the baby. Tyler goes ballistic, they get in a massive fight in the car, and she breaks up with him.

The tension in the film is enhanced by the use of different camera movements, image focus slipping, and color splashes only add to what is about to happen.

Violence breaks out, and Tyler finds a reason to express the rage within and without thinking hurts the people he loves and who love him. The tensions in Tyler’s life build to a point at which he can no longer control them. He commits a violent act, is arrested, and is sentenced to decades in jail.It ends up in an act to which he finds himself arrested and sentenced to jail.

Shortly after that, Tyler’s sister Emily, who has been nearly a forgotten person in the family, meets Luke (Lucas Hedges). The early scenes of their meeting and getting to know each other are magnificently done. They feel real and authentic to the characters. Both are damaged in different ways. Luke because of his father’s alcoholic rages and because his father left him and his mother. Emily, because she’s the forgotten one in the family and is now embarrassed because she’s the sister of her once-popular imprisoned brother.

When the film moves into this new story, the relationship between Luke and Emily, I started wondering where it was headed. Then I started worrying about Emily because she began to party and experiment with pot in the same way her brother did. I thought more trouble was brewing.

However, the story unfolds towards the power of forgiveness and speaking openly and truthfully. As Emily supports Luke in his healing, she, herself, is being healed.

I am not a fan of camera movement becoming a significant part of the story, but for some reason it worked. I could have used less of the swirling circular motions, but it did add to the sensation the film was attempting to make.

Also, as I recently wrote, I reviewed a different film recently, I’m not a big fan of changing the image size on the screen as a way to affect the viewer. But again, here it worked. At times it was letterbox style, other times almost portrait, like what one sees from a phone video, and at other times it was full screen. This is a story about a family on a journey through love, tough times, tragedy, and forgiveness, it worked.

Harrison Jr. was compelling as the young man attempting to live up to his father’s ideals, failing, and spiraling out of control. The angst leading to his lashing out is probably familiar to many a young man. Russell was sublime as Harrison’s younger sister, who had to come out of the shadows to be seen and own her own life. Demie was wonderful as Harrison’s girlfriend, who didn’t want to be controlled and wanted her feelings to be heard and honored. Brown as Harrison’s dad was terrific. His portrayal of a man who was blinded by his own work and not seeing the effect it was having on his wife and kids was convincing. Goldsberry was terrific as the stepmother who empathized with the kids and struggled to find her place when her husband refused to be empathic to her pain. Hedges was excellent as Russell’s boyfriend, who reached out in her time of need, and in turn was supported by her when he needed to deal with his own past. Trey Edward Shults wrote a strong and powerful script which he then in-turn directed. As a director he knew what he wanted, and I, for one, liked what he did.

Overall: This film captured the power of love and forgiveness over the expression of anger.