Crisis Control—Large and Small Scale
Review by Ken Burke The Avengers
This is a great action-filled Marvel Universe comic book movie with equal attention paid
to all of the major characters, but don’t try to make
it into more than that implies.
Footnote
Those of you outside of academia may not believe the minute
intricacies that this Israeli film explores; sadly (but wonderfully) enough, please
believe how plausible it all is.
The Five-Year Engagement
Delayed satisfaction in a romantic comedy is as old a
concept as the genre allows, although this one does a decent job of keeping us strung out until it’s all wrapped up.
You
might be asking yourself, how could a world-famous film review blogger (notice
that I didn’t say which planet) wait THIS LONG to finally post comments about
the MOVIE.WITH.THE.BIGGEST.OPENING.WEEKEND.EVER? (In the U.S. that is; The Avengers, Marvel-Disney's assault on our collective wallets raked in a monstrous
$207,438,708 for the domestic till in its first three days—although it will
take a bit more than that to cover its costs, yet there’s little concern that
there won’t be adequate profits soon—but Harry
Potter and the Deadly Hallows, Part 2 [David Yates, 2011] is still the foreign champ with
$314,000,000 at its debut, which combined with its U.S. first-run haul gives it the
worldwide opening weekend title at $483,189,427. However, The Avengers is
also headed for loftier territory on the All-Time lists, currently at #71 for
the U.S. totals and #39 for worldwide, but with its current income increasing
over 150% from last week—the second and third wave audiences must now be
attending after waiting for the initial fanboy [and girl] onslaught to recede.) The reason for my delay is that despite
my enthusiasm for seeing this movie—I did get there opening day but not at
midnight—I found myself preoccupied last week with my real job of grading term
papers for my Film in American Society class at world-renowned Mills College in
lovely sundrenched (for a change) Oakland, CA (although, based on the results a
good number of my students would likely have preferred that I spent my time
reviewing films rather than reviewing their grammer, gramar, grammar
problems). But now that final
exams are over and the academic world is once again safe from my red ink, let’s
see how safe the latest big box-office kahuna is from my devastating hammer-blow comments.
I
guess if I’m to be criticized for being a week late with the goods on the
Marvel muscle-gang then I’m also likely to be criticized for giving Joss
Whedon’s blockbuster a mere 3 ½ stars.
However, while I liked The
Avengers a lot (even in mere 2-D) I have to praise it more for being an
effective adaptation of a comic-book premise than for the essential quality of
either the narrative or its implications.
Unlike Christopher Nolan’s 2008 The
Dark Knight (no slouch itself at the box office, with the #3 ranking for
both domestic opening weekend and All-Time grosses and #10 on the worldwide
All-Time list with just over $1 billion in ticket sales), which managed to
transcend the simple good vs. evil battle so necessary for these fantasy
superhero films and present us with a chilling metaphor for our
terrorist-infested times with Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the deeply psychotic,
chaos-embracing Joker, The Avengers’
biggest triumph is simply balancing out the screen time and plot points among a
crowd of characters who could (and in some cases, have) star(ed) in their own
films to present a story that keeps a coherent narrative thread even for those
who haven’t seen the lead-ups to the current movie in the previous Tony Stark/Iron
Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Incredible Hulk (with Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner
this time around but Eric Bana and Edward Norton previously), Thor (Chris
Hemsworth), and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) offerings. That’s no small feat, given how audience
loyalty could easily make it difficult to please those whose attentions are
focused mainly on just one of the principal villain-bashers noted above and
don’t want to be bored having to endure the scenes where the others
dominate—not to mention pleasing a further cadre of fans whose preferences are
for more screen time for the well-toned, crafty, but non-superhuman members of
the team, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Clint Barton/Hawkeye
(Jeremy Renner), and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), as well as those who
appreciate the supporting roles of respected actors Stellan Skarsgård as
hijacked scientist Erik Selvig and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Tony
Stark’s co-executive and cohabitator.
Just getting all of these costumed crusaders and their cohorts into
situations where they’re effectively not tripping all over each other—except
when they’re purposely doing intra-team alpha-assertion chest-thumping—is a
great accomplishment, much to the credit of screenwriter Whedon and his collaborators
(who also manage to work a lot of effective humor into the script, giving
much-needed comic relief to an otherwise intensive, pounding 142 minute thrill ride).
What
we get here isn’t really much more than a series of WWE-pay-per-view-like
combat collisions that lead up to the main event (it’s getting pretty obvious
from my constant wrestling references that I waste too much cash on these
idiotic monthly events, isn’t it?) of stopping the twisted “god” Loki (unlike
in the original comics, he and his stepbrother Thor aren’t really ancient Norse
deities but instead are very powerful aliens from a quite distant planet) and
his vicious minions from conquering Earth. (Why we’re the only other planet in
the universe that all of these maniacal off-worlders want to invade is beyond
me; haven’t they seen how our numbers have fallen on the Interplanetary Stock
Exchange because of our global warming and pollution problems?) Beyond that, it’s pretty much like
every other alien invasion movie you’ve seen or could imagine where huge,
noxious things just keep coming out of the sky to wreck havoc until the
seemingly outmatched hero saviors can come up with a last-minute winning
strategy. (With one of the best of
the type for me being Roland Emmerich’s 1996 Independence Day, where an equally well-established group of Earth
stars [Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid, etc.] finally
triumph, with a detonation trick straight out of the original Star Wars [now Episode IV: A New Hope, George Lucas, 1977], resulting in a
collapse of the invading army, just as Loki’s vicious beasts are tamed when
he’s no longer able to channel the power of the mysterious energy cube, the
Tesseract—the sort of plot device that Hitchcock called the “MacGuffin,” a
necessary element to push the story forward but not something that had to be
all that well explained or even rational because after awhile you get caught up
in the events surrounding it and you don’t care much about whatever inspired the
initial motivations of the action. Loki’s still agog over the Tesseract until the end but we’ve
got more animate objects to pay attention to.)
Speaking
of renegade Asgardian Loki (Tom Hiddleston) brings me to another line of
commentary about tales such as what we find in The Avengers. Loki is
a fascinating villain, well played by Hiddleston as a brooding younger brother
whose vicious ambitions are clearly fueled by his desire to be a different kind
of avenger, one who seeks to rule Earth simply to antagonize sibling Thor and
to give himself a realm to dominate (“Freedom is life’s great lie,” “You were
made to be ruled”) because his previous goal of taking over Asgard from daddy Odin
was thwarted by the blonde hammer slammer. Yet, Loki is the only clearly defined villain in this
complex plot structure of interlocking grudge matches, which makes for a
narrative problem of balanced levels of intrigue, because if you have just one
articulated antagonist it’s hard to have him in direct combat with all of the
unified superheroes (unless the archfiend is so immensely powerful that even a
squadron of superhuman opponents are barely enough, as with the mid-‘80s DC
Comics destroyer, the Anti-Monitor, who was so impressive that even the
combined power of Superman, the Green Lantern Corps, and everyone else in their
stable was barely enough to defeat him), so you have to set up limited
one-on-one encounters between Loki and Thor, Loki and Iron Man, and, finally,
Loki and the Hulk which results in the Hulk literally wiping the floor with his
foe, showing once and for all that these Asgardians aren’t as all-powerful or
even immortal as we have mistakenly understood them to be (although when armed
with the right weapons such as Loki’s Tesseract-fueled staff or Thor’s mighty
mallet, Mjolner, you don’t want to irritate them too much). But even Loki can’t be everywhere at
once so as needed fill-in for a movie structure that demands
all-action-all-the-time we end up with the superheroes battling each other over
various interpersonal grievances until they finally see the light of survival
necessity, then put all of their energies and abilities in service of defeating
Loki's army as a team rather than each one attempting to dish out
justice as he sees fit.
And
it will mostly be he, not much she;
as has been pointed out quite a bit already, Johansson’s Black Widow is
effectively deadly when up against human baddies—to the point of defeating
several of them even though she’s tied to a chair when we first see her in The Avengers—but after the extraterrestrial
invaders show up her martial arts skills and pistol power are pretty feeble
weapons, leaving her relegated to the background battles; even equally human
Hawkeye has some potent arrows in his quiver that allow him to be a more
impactful warrior, but despite attempts to provide female moviegoers and comic
book readers with some alternatives to the testosterone powerhouses of these
stories, it’s still mostly a man’s world, at least until DC and Warners figure
out how to properly bring Wonder Woman to the screen (along with possibly the
DC version of The Avengers, the
Justice League of America, joining her with Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Flash
[not on screen yet either] and other heavy hitters). These ensemble stories are hard to control, with even the comics
versions also heavy on constant combat just to give all of the
players a starring scene and a frequent use of intra-squad squabbles to keep the spotlight on the known characters without further cluttering up the
story flow with a lot of famous villains as well.
For
those who are familiar with the various Avengers movie characters that led up
to the current collaboration but not so much with the comic book backgrounds
from which they spring (Which includes me. As a kid in the 1950s I read a lot of Superman and Batman
when they were both just patriotic crime stoppers, but over the years I’ve only
occasionally returned to get insights on the more traumatized Dark Knight, the
larger cosmic context of the Green Lanterns, and the occasional reset of the
universe as the DC folks get too bogged down in plotlines and have to freshen
things up with a new collection of origin stories; about the time that Marvel
was discovering how the not-as-patriotic-and-homogenized-as-they-were-assumed-to-be
teenagers of the world would respond to the more troubled versions of
superheroes like Spiderman and the Hulk, I was discovering my own traumas with
dating so the only Marvel character I ever followed much was Thor, during my
college years, when the audacity of using a god as a superhero fascinated me,
hence the helmet in the photo at the top of this review.), the character of
Nick Fury, a major agent of the secret government agency S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division
for the films, but with different titles over the years in the comics) may be a
bit of a mystery, just as the various appearances of S.H.I.E.L.D.-related
characters in the previous individual
Avengers movies may have been more confusing than helpful as plot
elements, especially if you didn’t see all of the episodes that lead to the
current team-up. I’m sure that now
with the overwhelming success of this first Avengers collaboration we’ll see
more of Nick in the future, possibly as a lead in his own film not only so that
we can better understand his (and his organization’s) connection to this
cluster of superheroes but also because Jackson is such a compelling and
successful screen presence. (He was already claimed as the most successful
box-office actor of all time, helped not only by the large number of movies
he’s been in—although often as an ensemble player rather than a singular
lead—but also by the enormous financial success of Jurassic Park [Steven
Spielberg, 1993] and the Star Wars prequels; with the added revenue from
The Avengers he could probably start his own studio if he wanted to
produce Nick Fury films at his leisure.)
However,
I do hope that when the inevitable Avengers sequels make it to the theatres
that they don’t succumb to the X-Men syndrome of constantly piling on
new members of the team just to play to the sensibilities of bloggers and
Comic-Con attendees; I know that constitutes enough of an audience to probably
pay back the increasing production costs of these high-tech superhero wonders,
but for those of us who can barely tell Hawkeye from DC’s Green Arrow or still
don’t understand how the Captain Marvel family ended up in the DC universe, can
we just keep it to the big names already established in the current Avengers? I’m all for giving Black Widow more to
do next time (and for keeping Whedon at the helm to make sure this huge ship
doesn’t head for the icebergs) but we’ve already got more than enough to work
with here without having to do a class reunion of every costumed savior who
ever helped poor battered NYC (the Public Works Dept. must never be able to finish the
cleanup of the last attack before the next one starts). So I say to Marvel and Disney, stay
with the good thing you’ve got; don’t make, as Nick Fury says, any “stupid-ass
decisions” with your Avengers sequels.
And
speaking of “stupid-ass decisions,” the Israeli academics and government
officials who give a prestigious award to the wrong guy in director-writer Joseph
Cedar‘s Footnote create a crisis of their own, not on the scale of Loki
invading Earth, certainly, but still a terrible state of affairs for the family
of father and son professors and their long-suffering wives (and if you want
direct testimony from the long-suffering wife of a college professor I’ll give
you Nina’s direct email address … on second thought, maybe not or
I’ll be the one suffering when she starts getting even more unsolicited email
than she already does … OK, never mind that idea and back to the review which
is already in progress). Footnote
was one of the nominees for the 2011 Foreign Language Oscar, certainly a worthy
contender (although I’ve yet to see one that tops the winner, A Separation
[Asghar Farhadi]) and a story that delves into interior interpersonal crises in
a manner that is seemingly light years away from the external action-filled
crises of The Avengers.
Still, for the individuals involved in the very intense scholarly
conflicts explored in Footnote the stakes may seem as high and the
outcome might be just as devastating as what happened in Manhattan because
that’s how critical the world of the scholar feels to those whose lives are
fully invested in it. (Again, I’m speaking
from over 30 years of experience living and competing in this compressed
universe of seemingly gigantic conflicts over such tiny grains of
accomplishment.) In brief, Eliezer
Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) is a traditionalist Talmudic scholar in Israel who
works in a painstaking manner examining his research topics by carefully
comparing endless lines of text and commentary, trying to draw inferences from
the implications of his ancient evidence.
His one major accomplishment is being listed in a footnote by an even
more prominent scholar, although Eliezer would have seemingly proved the
existence of a long-lost version of the Jerusalem Talmud through 30 years of meticulous
inductive logic except that a colleague, Prof. Grossman (Micah Lewensohn), now the head of Dr. Shkolnik’s
university department, accidently stumbled on
an actual copy of the old manuscript and claimed the praise more appropriate
for Eliezar. His son, Uriel (Lior
Ashkenazi, shown above) provides further frustration for dad by
achieving many more academic acknowledgements than his father ever did,
including membership in the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Just when the frustrations for the
respected but bitter elder Shkolnik can’t seem to get any worse he’s suddenly
awarded the Israel Prize for scholarship (his dream for 20
years), but Uriel is quietly informed that there was a mix-up in the
record-keeping and the prize was intended for him, not his father.
Obviously,
the clearest path to correction would be admission of error, which the awarding
committee wants to do immediately, especially the haughty Prof. Grossman, still
wallowing in his earlier triumph over Eliezar, but Uriel begrudgingly, angrily
refuses because he knows how devastated his now elated father would be to find
that his only major accolade was a mistake intended for his offspring,
especially when he doesn’t really approve of his son’s research methods of
Internet tools, etc. rather than the traditionally laborious work of textual
analysis. The problem is that
Uriel is just as bitter as his father (and neither of their wives are very
happy either, nor are Uriel’s children), despite his previous successes. He desperately wants the prize even as
he tries to be generous enough to grant his antagonistic dad some measure of recognition
for all of the praiseworthy time and energy his elder devoted to the
understanding of proper scholarship.
This may all seem silly and petty to anyone outside the supposedly
hallowed halls of university life, but this film for me cuts through the public
personas of professors who are vaguely admired by the outside world for their
seeming command of arcane human accomplishments, revealing the bitter warfare
that goes on in small offices (especially the intentionally ridiculous one
where Uriel comes to argue for preserving his father’s dignity by allowing him
to keep the unjustified prize) on obscure campuses where lives and careers are
preserved or lost, not always because of actual achievements but as the
result of political decisions that would make for juicy social scandals if
revealed in forums such as 60 Minutes (if anyone wanted to watch
academic scandals instead of political ones) rather than being forever sealed
behind the wall of “personnel decisions.”
As shown in the clips noted below there’s a clever cinematic device of
presenting a montage of the father’s and son’s biographies through imagery that
seems to have been created on a computer but presented in a traditional slide
show of static, shifting images.
This gives an effect of distancing us from anything but the objective
rendering of these two troubled men while still revealing the emotional turmoil
that lies beneath their public surfaces.
(Done in a manner not unlike the opening information-laden newsreel
biography in Citizen Kane [Orson Welles, 1941]. How long has it been since I’ve dragged
up this eternal favorite of mine for comparison to merely mortal films? If it’s
been too long, don’t despair because I’m sure it will be back again soon—and
often.)
Neither
of these guys are people you’d like to hang around with, even if you respect
their different approaches to the life of the mind, but they’re both
passionate about their understandings of how that life should be lived, even though such
passion results in public praise but constant tension within their private
worlds so that no generation of this family has any sense of resolution or
personal fulfillment. (These
professors’ outlooks are as cluttered as their parallel offices,
piled with books and papers that prove their intentions but with few tangible
results, especially for patriarch Eliezer, that show that the effort has been
worthwhile—Uriel is more respected and honored by the academic establishment
for his scholarly investigations, but it seems to bring him little joy,
especially as he desperately covets the award mistakenly announced for his
father.)
Given
that this was a small-release film to begin with and has likely already
departed even the larger urban centers where it played, I doubt that you’ll
have access to it prior to an upcoming DVD release so I’ll go ahead—as
usual—and ruin the ending for the uninitiated by praising the unresolved
ambiguity of having father and son arrive at the public occasion for the
awarding of the Israel Prize but with Eliezer having applied his meticulous
research methods once again to wording in his announcement letter that leads
him to the conclusion that his son wrote the letter (a condition of grumpy
Prof. Grossman’s in agreeing to allow his old foe to keep the prize, that his
son could never receive it and must provide the substantiating evidence that
his father was worthy, a final humiliation for both generations of troubled
Shkolniks). The film arbitrarily
cuts off before any resolution to the discourse (in a manner like the sudden
cut to black at the conclusion of The Sopranos TV series) so we never
know if Eliezer reveals the ruse and refuses the award or accepts it in order
to ostensibly prove his intellectual worthiness despite knowing that the honor
is not his to accept, even more importantly knowing how this mistake is
realized by the people to whom he is most shamed not to admit it. If the seemingly miniscule struggles
presented here seem silly and pointless to those of you not part of the
isolated pressure-cooker world of academia, all I can say is that this film
reveals the constant clandestine struggles and grasping for recognition that are
such a vital part of the so-called scholarly world. Footnote may not be nearly as relatable to the masses
as is the 9/11 metaphor of another callous attack on New York City as shown in The Avengers,
but for a small social segment of us it’s just as meaningful and every bit as
passionately critical to our obscure existences. If you can resonate with that, even at a distance from its
academic setting, I’d highly recommend that you seek out this film; it’s a rare
gem that slowly grows on your consciousness, even weeks after the viewing.
By
comparison, The Five-Year Engagement (Nicholas Stroller) would only grow
mold after its initial encounter if left out in the cultural atmosphere for too
long, although it’s pleasant enough upon first taste but it just doesn’t hold
its flavor after the initial digestion (there’s a lot about cooking in this
movie so just bear with the food references if you will). The only reason that I include this
pleasant but easily forgettable romantic comedy with the other two films
analyzed in this review is its connection to the sometimes rotten world of
academia shared by Footnote and Violet’s (Emily Blunt) immersion into
the shenanigans (and worse) of the Psychology Department at Michigan State. Shortcomings of the university
environment aren’t the main focus of The Five-Year Engagement, however; instead
this is more of a story about how the sacrifices needed for ongoing couplehood
are put to the severe test when one partner gets much of what she wants but the
other has to give up too much in order to just be with her even if his own life
is getting as frozen as an upper-Midwest winterscape. Tom (Jason Segal) couldn’t be more charming and
accommodating to the love of his life when her post-doctoral career leads her
far away from their intended San Francisco locale, where his aspiring chef’s
career was just about to blossom before getting nipped in the bud. He goes along with Violet only to find
that upscale cooking options aren’t so available in Ann Arbor (not because of
his abilities but mostly because no one thinks he’s sane for leaving San
Francisco for the “exotic wonderment” of rustbelt life; I guess that means they
can’t trust him with a knife either).
Why exactly their planned marriage is put on hold until both of them
have somehow settled into more permanent careers (even as her grandparents keep
dying during the extended waiting period) is never adequately explained
(because that would likely eliminate the whole premise of the movie before we
even hit the half-hour mark), so they continue to postpone, even as he becomes a socially-withdrawn deer hunter and she dazzles her supervising
professor into an appointment extension thereby complicating the conditions of
this romantic comedy in a manner that was probably original in about 500 B.C.
but has been explored quite a bit ever since in a good number of other options which are non-surprisingly similar to this one.
The
dialogue in this movie is often witty, the two leads are very endearing (even
when they’re getting on each other’s—and our—nerves), and the delicious dishes
that keep popping up throughout the plot make for a great incentive to have
dinner after the screening, but despite the pleasant time you’ll spend with Tom
and Violet (and all of their unconventional/downright wacky friends and family)
you’ll be able to write this one in your head while you’re watching it,
stopping only to admire the landscapes of the locations (including some beautiful
shots of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, despite its not being a likely
route to go toward or away from Michigan, but who wants to quibble over
geography when we’ve already heard enough complaints about Benjamin Braddock
driving the wrong way over the neighboring Bay Bridge to get to and from
Berkeley in The Graduate [Mike Nichols, 1967]). However, the ugly side of academia
rears its uncomfortable head again after the relocation as our cozy couple
begins to drift away from each other, leaving Violet more susceptible to the
advances of her faculty supervisor, Prof. Winton Childs (smarmy Rhys Ifans). In a not-unexpected manner he proves to
be domineering, manipulative, and unethical—in other words, the epitome of the
long-time university academic aristocrat, although that proves enough of an
attraction for Violet as Tom wanders back west and reinvents himself as the
commander of the best taco truck on the west coast. How he thinks that new success will translate to the
snow-covered streets of Ann Arbor when he links up with Violet again and agrees
to return with her because of his new-found culinary mobility isn’t all that
clear to me (nor is the reality that she’ll still be working with former lover Dr. Childs),
but at this point in the film we’re back in MacGuffin-land where the
complications have gone on long enough and unexplored resolutions are the daily
special (with a side of chips and salsa, I bet).
There’s
nothing wrong with The Five-Year Engagement, it’s just a bit of an
expected delivery after the set-up from the trailer. For the relatively short time of your life that you’ll spend
watching it you’ll find a very pleasant romantic encounter and a couple of lead
actors that are well matched with each other (although Blunt also seemed a nice
match with Ewan McGregor in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen [Lasse
Hallström] so maybe she’s just the über-compatible Everywoman), but it’s just a
well-executed genre movie, as is its much more expensive current theatrical
companion, The Avengers. If
you’re really looking for more than you already know what to expect from the
available previews, I’d recommend Footnote as the best of this bunch
mainly because it offers much more than it seems to promise even if it
purposely refuses to resolve anything that you might expect to have closure. I can count on Tom and Violet
resolving their differences, just as I can count on the superhero collaborative
to save Manhattan once again from total destruction; what I can’t count on is
what will become of the embattled Shkolnik family, which I won’t learn from the
film either, but Footnote is worth more with its speculations than the
resolved feeling that comes with these other pleasant but predictable formula
packages. Sometimes contemplating
the next iteration of the crisis is the more satisfying option than seeing it
safely diffused (although speed-riding to the conclusion of The Avengers
is also time well-invested, if just for the adrenalin rush of its spectacular
special effects).
If
you’d like to explore more about The Avengers here are some useful
links:
If
you’d like to research more about Footnote
here are some useful links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwQ3xXpFBng
(this is another one of those sites that offers you a link to watching the
whole film for free; pursue it as you wish)
If
you’d like to know more about The
Five-Year Engagement here are some useful links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa74UNlVOZ8
(short interview with producer Judd Apatow)
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