(Field of Dreams [Phil Alden Robinson, 1989])
If you don’t, they will all leave home.
Reviews by Ken Burke
Once again there’s nothing of the mainstream options at the local movie houses I’m interested in seeing (beyond the ones already reviewed in recent weeks [see the Archives to your right if you like]) so I’m cruising through Independents Alley once again for your consideration with these reviews.
Columbus (Kogonada)
“Executive Summary” (no spoilers): When a famous architecture scholar comes to deliver a lecture in a Midwestern city, then falls ill, it prompts his son to travel from Seoul, Korea to Columbus, Indiana, although there’s little love lost here for his dying father. To help fill his time he engages a local high-school-graduate with limited ambitions (but a fascination with the Modernist buildings that have accumulated in this offbeat locale) in lengthy conversations generally more so about the nature of life than dialogue used to drive a more active story. That’s about all I can say in non-spoiler-mode regarding this low-key but highly-enjoyable unconventional film which is well worth your time to see but currently is playing in a very limited number of venues, so I encourage you to search it out by whatever means may be (or become) available to you before it evaporates.
Here’s the trailer: (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate that same button on the full screen’s lower right or your “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but as this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film—or want to save some bucks—to help any of you who’d like to learn more details yet avoid important plot-reveals I’ll identify such give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this: ⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, continue on if you like.
That’s about all there is to this quiet, meditative plot (enhanced by many shots of stern, sleek Columbus architecture, often filmed on overcast, rainy days) until our 2 main characters reach open-ended, next-stage life-decisions ⇒as Casey finally decides to accept her proposed-mentor’s New Haven offer (partly in response to when she discovers Mom’s not at work on her night-shift-job, possibly having taken up with a man we see only briefly)—as well as promising herself to quit those constant cigarettes—while Jin begrudgingly accepts staying in Columbus until his father’s demise, which could come in days or weeks. Oh, there are other scenes that could lead to more than they do—such as what seems to be Jin and Casey’s last night together when she parks at her old high school, turns on the car’s headlights to illuminate her impromptu dance, with some musical accompaniment after she clicks on the car radio (but Jin’s dozed off for this “performance”), followed by them going into the school but nothing comes of that except a cut to them being awakened in his B & B room the next morning by Posey pounding on the door (he’d turned his phone off), but they’ve slept separately, fully clothed—matched by other possibilities that don’t exist, such as any follow-up between Casey and her mother about Mom not being at work that night (which we see along with the daughter as the building she works in has easily-viewed-through glass walls),⇐ but this film is more focused on contemplation rather than exposition-to-resolution.
So What? I’m not going to try to impress you with a list of the famous architects and artists whose work is showcased in Columbus because except for a few such as I.M. Pei, Jean Tinguely, Robert Indiana, and Henry Moore I’m not familiar with their work (despite being an undergrad art major/art history minor, although I admit I learned a lot more about Greek and Roman temples, Romanesque through Baroque cathedrals than I did about Modernist architecture; if you want to know more about what’s in Columbus, though, sites such as this one can be a big help), but I can say the subdued cinematography (matching the pace and intensity—or lack thereof—of the dialogue) is modestly exquisite so if you have a fascination with this sort of thing a trip to Columbus would be well worth your while, as was mine just to see all of these well-conceived public buildings within the easily-explored-time of 1 hr. 40 min. on screen. Kogonada provides his own interesting images as well, with frequent shots allowing glimpses from one room into another through open doorways, implying depth and details of these spaces that aren’t further explored, just as his characters give us just enough to be curious about but, except for Casey’s occasional monologues, never enough to know more as whatever they’ve shared among themselves is largely kept from us.
⇒Possibly the most interesting visual set-up in the film involves Jin’s attempt to get sexual with Posey’s character, as we never see either of them directly but instead just their reflections in 2 mirrors at the other end of the room they’re in, first together on screen right as they briefly kiss before she tells him to leave then him in a separate mirror on the left looking back at her in the other mirror on the right looking at him just before he walks out the door. An earlier shot of thoughtful Jin sitting by a closet door where his father’s hat and coat hang empty beside him is also marvelously sublime. Other shots are wonderful to look out simply by being backlit so that the character’s in silhouette, almost sculptural in repose.⇐ One aspect of Columbus that doesn’t match its visual quality, however, is the clarity of the dialogue audio (assuming it wasn’t from some speaker delivery problem in the usually-dependable-quality of the Shattuck Cinema in Berkeley, CA where I saw this film with my cinephile-wife, Nina; admittedly, both of us are dealing with some age-related-hearing-challenges, but I don’t think it’s so much us this time as the soundtrack mix) which shifts a lot from clearly-audible-voices to such apparent-mumbling as to obscure what’s being said (still, this is more of a distraction than a crucial plot-following-problem as most everything said in this story is more conceptually-allusive than narratively-essential). If you think you’d be annoyed by something like that, your best bet may be to wait for some sort of video-viewing-option where you can employ closed-captioning; after its 2 weeks in release this extremely-under-the-radar-film is now playing in only 7 domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters so I wouldn’t expect it to be very easy to locate anyway.
Bottom Line Final Comments: While audience response to Columbus has been severely limited at present (with the tiny slice of available screens the chief factor) the showing we attended was much better packed with viewers (appreciative, at that) than anything else I’ve been to lately (except for Dunkirk [Christopher Nolan; review in our July 27, 2017 posting]), so our group was actively responsible for contributing to the mere $86,537 gross so far, with my hopes that its per-screen-average of $6,351 (better than all but 7 others on Box Office Mojo’s Top 50 list for last weekend [3 of those being esoterics playing in even fewer theaters than Columbus], while its per-screen-take even beat out 18 of Mojo’s top 20 [only #1 Annabelle: Creation {David F. Sandberg} averaging $10,006 at 3,502 theaters, #20 Wind River {Taylor Sheridan}—set to be reviewed here next week—averaging $14,268 at 45 theaters did better]) will encourage wider distribution of this haunting, mesmerizing experience. Critics certainly have done their part to encourage attendance with a whopping 98% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes (of films both they and I have reviewed this year, only Baby Driver [Edgar Wright; review in our July 6, 2017 posting] at 98% and Get Out [Jordan Peele; review in our May 11, 2017 posting] at 99% were that high [although Baby …’s now at 94% as more reviews have come in]), an extremely-high 91% score from the normally-more-reserved-folks at Metacritic (their only previous result like that this year was Dunkirk at 94%)—you’ll find more details on both of these critics'-accumulation-responses in the links to this film far below.
As with the very-unusual A Ghost Story (David Lowery; review in our July 27, 2017 posting), Columbus—not as weird as ... Story, I promise you (other critics joined me in liking this oddity, though [RT 89%, MC 84%], but it’ll likely vanish from theaters also, now playing in only 57 of them after 6 weeks in release taking in a measly $1.5 million in domestic receipts)—is better seen (and heard, when possible) than read about because what works is all in nuance with very little occurring to actively stir your passions (even early on when the professor collapses to the shock of Posey’s long-time-assistant character [she later tells Jin she loves the old man, but we’re not given any hint it’s more than platonic, at least on his part] it’s shown in a long shot on one of those overcast days so you can hardly note what’s happening), ⇒except for a scene on one of those great old wooden-covered-bridges where Jin and Casey get into a heated discussion, each accusing the other of poor relations with their parents (his is obvious, but he berates her for taking the easy path of non-engagement with life by claiming she needs to stay in Columbus to look after her mother [they live together] when Mom’s actively encouraged her to seek an unknown future away in New Haven).⇐
For you to truly appreciate this unique filmmaker’s intended encounter with Columbus (a film which may at least lead to larger screen exposure for Richardson along with more expansive roles for Cho than what he’s previously had in the American Pie [Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz, 1999; James B. Rogers, 2001; Jesse Dylan, 2003; Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, 2012], Harold & Kumar [Danny Leinder, 2004; Hurwitz, Schlossberg, 2008; Todd Strauss-Schulson, 2011] movies or the current Star Trek reboot [J.J. Abrams, 2009, 2013; Justin Lin, 2016] taking over the role of Hikaru Sulu), I encourage you to somehow see it on a decent-size-screen (no cellphones please), watch it when you’re in an attentive mood, appreciate it for the rare subtleties you’ll find from the American studio system (yet it’s still noticeably an independent within that context, being distributed by the Sundance Institute).
Until you do find it, though, I hope you’ll be content with listening to my choice of a Musical Metaphor for this quiet (at times a little too much so with that soundtrack mix) delight, a tactic to end reviews with final commentary from another medium. I felt I had no other option than Simon and Garfunkel’s “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” (from their 1970 Grammy-winning Bridge Over Troubled Water [Album of the Year, title tune as Record of the Year, Song of the Year, plus 3 others]) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUPG_PzNYXg with images of various Wright architectural creations (written by Paul in honor of Art’s earlier architect-ambitions but also its own metaphor, of the upcoming split of this famous singing duo, so the line “I can’t believe your song is gone so soon” can be seen as referring to both the soon-to-be-separate-careers of these long-time collaborators [but not always friends] and the short-lived, unresolved encounter of Jin and Casey). While the main characters in this film didn’t exactly “harmonize till dawn,” along with them not literally saying “I never laughed so long,” a sense of warm connection existed between them in a metaphorical manner so I’ll bet in future years—when whatever’s happened with them we’ll never know anything further about—they could each still say “When I run dry I stop awhile and think of you.” That’s also what Jeannette Walls could say about her father, so let’s see how that happens.
The Glass Castle (Destin Daniel Cretton)
“Executive Summary” (no spoilers): Based on a best-selling-memoir written by this film’s central character, Jeannette Walls, in this story we shift back and forth from her present life in NYC (the late 1980s) with her fiancée to various stages of her childhood (in the 1960’s-‘70s) when she was forced to move around a lot because her alcoholic father, Rex, and free-spirited artist mother, Rose Mary, insisted on living by their own ideals, which didn’t conform to social norms, housing codes, nor daily nutritional requirements, plus there were problems with Dad either creating trouble or needing to evade bill collectors. After leaving home to finish high school and college, Jeannette’s got a successful career as a journalist, is engaged to an up-and-coming investment banker, trying her best to forget her former life when she sees her parents rooting in a Manhattan dumpster, having moved to NYC, becoming squatters in order to be close to their 4 children again, all of whom live there by now. You can easily get the details from the book, but I’ll stick to my no spoilers pledge by saying this film contains a lot of heartache, apparently all of it true (in some manner, with lots of omissions to maintain a standard running time). You might find fascination or inspiration with this story, which I’ll mildly recommend if you can tolerate the ongoing instances of various forms of child abuse, but based on my wife’s reaction (she read the book), you’d probably be better off with the written source material if you want to invest a bit more of your time to read it.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading any further, please refer to the previous plot spoilers warning far above.
What Happens: Jeannette Walls (Brie Larson) is a successful writer for New York magazine in 1989, living in a well-appointed-apartment, dressing fashionably, engaged to already-successful-but-still-ambitious young investment banker David (Max Greenfield)—so we’re already in slightly-reconstructed (no lawsuits)-territory because Walls’ bio shows her marrying Eric Goldberg in 1988; ⇒further, they divorced in 1996, but David’s already gone by the end of this film which seems to be shortly after 1994 when her father, Rex Walls, died ⇐—but when returning from a social event one night she sees 2 people rooting through trash cans, shocked to realize it’s her parents, Rex (Woody Harrelson) and Rose Mary (Naomi Watts), who’ve followed their 4 children—Lori (Sarah Snook), Jeannette, Brian (Josh Caras), Maureen (Brigette Lundy-Paine)—to NYC, trying to reestablish familial ties with them after they’d all moved away from their Welch, WV home to escape these odd parents, hoping to find some direction better than the rootless existence they’d been raised in. From there we’re often in flashback mode to those earlier days, sometimes with Jeannette (often called Mountain Goat by her Dad) as a very young girl (played by Chandler Head), otherwise as a pre-teen (Ella Anderson) until her high-school years when Larson takes over the role. We see Rex has non-corporate, even non-institutional, ideals ("You learn from living. Everything else is a damn lie!") while Rose Mary’s a painter driven by her artistic needs (she stays prolific over the years, with her canvases filling any Walls’ dwelling, although no one else seems to be buying any of them), but Dad’s quick shifts from loving father to hot-tempered bully (and deadbeat where his bills are concerned) often lead to fleeing in their quickly-packed-station-wagon, living in abandoned houses, food money spent on his alcoholism, starvation (one scene shows Jeanette feeding Maureen a mixture of sugar and butter, the only edibles in the house), constant uncertainty each day after day.
Despite the “adults” professing love for these kids, their parenting skills often leave much to be desired such as the scene at a swimming pool where Rex keeps throwing Jeannette into the deep end in order to force her to swim (she barely does, struggling to shore while he beams with pride at her “accomplishment”) or another where Rose Mary’s so involved with her painting she insists little Jeannette cook the hot dogs for their lunch, leading to the girl leaning up over the pot to stir the boiling meat as her dress catches fire on the gas jet resulting in severe burns on her torso along with a frantic trip to the hospital. She’s glad to see Dad and the rest of the troop arrive later when she’s in recovery, but based on the concerns expressed by the doctor and a social worker, Rex has little Brian fake a traumatic injury causing enough distraction for Rex to whisk Jeanette away for another escape from responsibility (and payment), with his bare-bones-generosity later being a birthday present of her own star in the nighttime sky (although he agrees when she chooses planet Venus instead). These constant escapades (along with Rex’s inability to hold down a job) finally lead them back to his rural home in Welsh where they meet their caustic grandmother, Erma (Robin Bartlett), then move into a miserably-run-down-shack—intended as the site of his long-delayed-construction of a grandiose "glass castle," although all that ever happens is the kids digging a hole for foundation work that just becomes a garbage pit over the years while they continue to live there.
⇒Left with Grandma when Rex and Rose Mary need to return to Texas for her mother’s funeral, Jeannette’s startled to find the old woman sexually abusing Brian, although she claims nothing was happening; the kids also find their Dad’s long-forgotten-diary where he talks about feeling like he’s “drowning in shit,” leading them to surmise Grandma abused Rex as a boy as well (although he defends his mother when Jeannette yells at her grandmother during a family dinner for slapping Brian who spit out her food). This leads to Jeannette working with her siblings to get them all to enroll in school rather than the erratic “home schooling” Rex claimed was more useful for them and Rose Mary was all too compliant about even when he was abusive toward his wife. By the time Lori and Jeannette are in high school, Lori’s made plans to run off to NYC; Jeannette soon follows after learning that Rose Mary inherited property in Texas probably worth $1 million but did nothing about selling it to provide material support for their impoverished family. A couple of years later, though, her scholarships have left her about $1,000 short of her college expenses so she’s ready to drop out when Rex surprisingly shows up with the needed cash (and a mink coat, ready to be hocked) which he won after coming north, putting his poker skills to work on some unlucky city-slickers.⇐
⇒With all this as background, when we settle into the 1989 present of this narrative we find Jeannette, along with her as-yet-unannounced-fiancée (where Dad’s concerned) attending a family gathering in their parents’ squatter’s flat where Rex and David get into a drunken argument over the (de)merits of capitalism, David gets punched, Jeannette swears off her parents for good even when later Mom contacts her that Dad’s finally dying from years of assaulting his body with cigarettes and whiskey; however, during a dinner with David’s very important pending-client-couple she suddenly leaves, literally runs (carrying her high heels) to Rex’s bedside where they easily reconcile. What we know of the Walls’ lives ends shortly after that with a Thanksgiving dinner at Jeannette’s for the family (in a more modest domicile than we’ve previously seen her inhabit; she's also now a freelancer having become disconnected from her previous publications)—even seeming-wild-child Maureen’s come back from California for a visit (with hints among the other siblings that when she was the last one at home she was molested too, by her father)—minus Rex (assumed dead) and David (assumed divorced, so maybe Dad was right after all about this guy not truly representing his daughter’s values although this scene doesn’t feel like 4 years later to match the actual chronology, but it's a minor issue) where they all toast departed Rex, whom Rose Mary encapsulates with “Life with your father was never boring” (neither is this film, despite other problems I may have with it).⇐
So What? While a lot more occurs in … Castle than in Columbus, I don’t feel the need to describe more than I did about the latter with the situation quickly clear that Jeannette as a young adult in NYC has little empathy for the nomadic lifestyle she was raised with nor for the parents who perpetuated such upon her, although the flashbacks of her earlier life do show there were a good number of enjoyable times accompanying the desperate, miserable ones. Actually, a chief reason for me seeing this film at all was to honor the interest Nina had in it after reading Walls’ autobiography, which spoke effectively to my sweet wife's ongoing fascination with dysfunctional families. (I’ll leave further comments on that topic to her if she wants to make a reply to this review, although I think I can safely say that her parallel strong attraction to stories about the Holocaust can be traced to her “extensive” European Jewish heritage [1% according to one DNA test, slightly less from another one]—which she’s quite proud of, only wishing the percentage were higher, given her empathy toward all forms of suffering—and her sincere desire to know more about what generates such stark inhumanity so as to be able to better contribute to eradicating such atrocities whenever possible, at such a confrontational time on our planet when we need vigilance more now than ever.)
Walls’ life with her parents probably wouldn’t be labeled an “atrocity,” but it certainly left her with enough bad memories (along with a horrible cluster of fire-scars) to justify her disinterest in their relocation to NYC, although I’ll just have to accept the account of her reconciliation with Rex prior to his death—given her aid with the production/marketing of this film—even though I could see why she’d have maintained her distance from these “loco” parents. (Who give new context to the in loco parentis [“in the place of a parent”] concept colleges [where I’ve spent much of my life] espouse as responsibility to their students, although Jeannette and her siblings likely found considerably more “parenting” happening during whatever public and higher education experiences they had than anything their biological parents had to offer, except for a general sense of love for their offspring.)*
*Given that Walls is better off speaking for herself than me trying to translate her life and feelings, I’ll just refer you for more details to this interview with her or to her book, also The Glass Castle (2005; it stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for a hefty 261 weeks) which Nina has read (I haven’t; no surprise), which she found to be much more impactful than the film (no surprise there either, given how much more “landscape” a book has to work with in developing its concepts: … Castle’s script probably runs about the standard 120 pages—with wide margins for dialogue—to produce its 2 hr. 7 min. running time while Nina’s paperback edition of the source book runs 288 full-text-pages, a standard situation for these frequent print-to-screen-adaptations). Even reading an extensive summary of the book gives me a sense of how much more there was to the Walls’ sad family saga, so maybe that’s where you should invest your valuable time/reallocated-movie-money.
Bottom Line Final Comments: I usually attempt to determine my stars-ratings prior to looking up the critical consensus sites because I don’t want to be too influenced by how others have already gone public; however, I was still mulling over 3 vs. 3½ when I checked RT (49%) and MC (a surprisingly higher 56%), which, I must admit, helped steer me to my choice of 3 stars (still numerically above the official crowd—60% of 5 on my scale, although I also admit you rarely see anything higher than 4 from me, so my choice’s essentially more like 70% if you want to get really specific), although I can’t articulate all that well why I’m not that enthused by The Glass Castle, I just have to say that despite the effectively-depicted (awful)-manner in which these kids were raised ⇒(along with acknowledging I had to accept the melodramatic reuniting of father and daughter at the end of the film as being true to Jeannette’s life—that is, until I skimmed the end of Nina’s book to find that whole “rush to reconciliation” scene never happened, so now I feel a bit more confirmed the manipulative sense I had of the incident was just that, devaluing what I’d seen on screen somewhat, even though I know scriptwriters sometimes must veer heavy-handedly in order to be concise as well as hammer home their dramatic themes),⇐ I just didn’t leave the theater with the same sense of artistic experience-into-closure that I’d feel just a day later after watching Columbus.
Rather than spend any more time pondering how to put this nebulous-but-restrained-feeling into my own words, I decided to be efficient (that is, cheat, just like Rex would have wanted me to do to get my task accomplished) by borrowing someone else’s statements (another reason why I don’t get paid for doing this, but at least I cite my sources) so I turned to Thelma Adams of the New York Observer who says: “This is the most glowing grim drama I’ve seen outside of PBS. The film enshrines the hard-knocks narrative when it should be getting dirt under its fingernails—the real-life clips of the family at the end credits suggest both a more charismatic father and a dingier, duskier existence. […] Watts, as the mama, scrabbles to make the role hers but seems constrained by straggly hair and hippie cottons and not quite enough light in the character to counter the glow of the camera. […] There are heart-tugging moments in The Glass Castle, but Walls’s bestselling memoir needed to be roughed up and aired out. For it to match up to the book, the movie needed the glass to be smashed, not every shard treasured.” I couldn’t (didn’t) say this any better myself.
Maybe you’ll disagree with me (and all those critics I haven’t yet stolen anything from) if you see The Glass Castle for yourself; at least you’ll have an easier time finding it than Columbus because if it’s playing in beautiful downtown Hayward, CA (10 min. from my garage door) it must be somewhere reasonably close to your neighborhood, or probably soon will be (maybe showing in an auditorium behind a painted yellow door, Rose Mary’s traditional entryway to insure good fortune—although you’d think she’s eventually choose a new strategy given the results she's had with Rex).*
*Or, if you’d like to find something else cinematic to watch for free (legitimately) here are some options for you; I offer thanks to my fine friend Barry Caine for passing along this info for our use.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the summary of Two Guys reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!
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Here’s more information about Columbus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59p6-a9LHQM (30:20 interview with director Kogonada)
Here’s more information about The Glass Castle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5baPu71rbo (extensive—1:09:54—interview with author/inspiration for the film’s main female character, Jeanette Walls, and actors Naomi Watts, Brie Larson—for some odd reason you have to go forward to 4:51 for this video to begin; at 44:45 director-screenwriter Destin Daniel Cretton joins in)
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By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken*
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.
*YouTube keeps deleting links to this Eagles performance so I keep putting a newer version back in but you’ll just find dead links in our previous postings prior to July 6, 2017, so don’t be confused.
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