Adele Bertei

Arthur Newman: A Gem From 2012's Toronto Film Festival

2012-09-20T13:09:07-04:00

Who among us has never felt the urge to shake off our identity and start over, with a new name, a new life far away from our stockpile of disenchantments?

In this atypical road movie, we first meet Wallace Avery (Colin Firth) in his local unemployment office staring into space with the hangdog look of the utterly lost. A dead end job at Fed Ex, a low affect, uninspiring girlfriend (Ann Heche) and a son who hates him are all he has to look forward to. Before the disappointments of life overrule what's left of his expectations, Wallace fakes his own death and hits the road with a phony ID in what has to be the most creative act he's ever accomplished; he becomes Arthur Newman, golf pro and aspiring manifestor of a long lost dream.

The journey begins when Wallace as ennui meets anomie in Charlotte (Emily Blunt). A wreck of a punk gamine posing as her schizophrenic twin sister Mikhaila (Mike), she too is running away and the oblivion she seeks in overdosing on cough syrup (and in her sister's identity) only serves to exacerbate the out-of-control feelings she's running from. Arthur and Mike are as unlikely a duo as one can encounter, yet they will unlock one another in a delicate unraveling not often rendered in contemporary film.

Once on the road together, Mike seduces Arthur into playing a game; they break into happy couple's houses and act out their identities, dressing in their clothes, goofing off and ultimately making love in character as each couple. Launching from the idea of how we often look to other people's lives for clues of how to live our own, the first of these romps leads to one of the most moving love scenes (posing as a sex scene) I've ever watched, where I actually felt like a voyeur in a multi-faceted masquerade. Like Russian nesting dolls, this film reveals more than it could ever hope to hide.

Although director Dante Ariola doesn't fail to entertain and there are plenty of humorous moments, there's something very humble at work here as we watch Colin Firth and Emily Blunt inhabit this story, an intimacy the extent of which is rarely seen in contemporary film. Perhaps it lies in the fact that the story, written by Becky Johnston can be read as a metaphor for the lives of actors, who are constantly engaged in the process of becoming someone else. I believe that for Firth and Blunt, this attests in part for the nakedness of their performances. Throughout this masquerade both of the character's faces are in the process of becoming... becoming closer to a great and pure truth of existence and this is what holds us, this is what is so beautiful to watch.

The film's sublime edge also lies within the talents of a new director brave enough to swim against the stream of the excessive, overblown gestures that are now becoming conventional, especially those expected of commercial directors on their maiden features. Dante Ariola comes to features from award-winning successes as a commercial director. It takes a finely honed set of skills to be able to tell a great story in 30 seconds. Yet when faced with the challenge of 90 minutes or more many commercial directors fail to achieve the breadth, pace and subtlety Ariola successfully arrives at on his first outing.

This is a weak moment in American film history. Films of the 1970s were unafraid to investigate who we are within the society we're enclosed by. Where is The Deer Hunter of today's cinema? The shock of trauma, of heartbreak mean nothing in the absence of quiet and reflection. In today's cultural landscape we could use a heaping portion of the stillness to breathe, and we need insightful portraits of outsiders and the disenfranchised; not the clichéd homeless or the drug-addled but the Wallace Avery's who make up the bulk of our working society. This species of screen story is not encouraged or promoted as it is, ironically, in contemporary cable television. American movies dole out plenty of mindless escapism despite the overwhelming majority of smart baby boomers and inquisitive youth of all classes who are looking for nutritious content. Dull un-layered stories posing as quirky, or the effects-laden blockbuster with its ADD editorial style continue to critically trump the psychological character-driven pieces that once gave American film its most intelligent and soulful content.

We don't always need our tropes tied up in bows of precise conclusions. Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master is a case in point of where American filmmaking should be headed. Stasis tends to frighten big money, which believes it has to beat the future at its own game with the pace of an AK-47. Sometimes we desperately need to sit still and think where we are within all this spin. Arthur Newman gives us the type of reflective filmmaking that, to quote Paul Schrader, "transforms empathy into aesthetic appreciation, experience into expression, emotions into form."

Smart, adult and honest with an exquisite music score, Arthur Newman is not a sappy movie, or a story of wisdom swathed in gauze. If you're looking for quiet yet no less thrilling performances of little lives on the margins and an entertaining experience of sublime reflection, look out for Arthur Newman.

Every Day a Memorial Day

2012-05-31T14:58:25-04:00

Memorial Day has passed, our day to honor and remember the soldiers, sailors, airmen and women who gave their lives for America. Yet a day does not pass without me mourning the America they've lost their lives for.

On the front page of Sunday's New York Times May 27th is a photograph of a U.S. soldier. Head bowed, he walks through a field of poppies in Afghanistan. The color is lurid; a festoon of camouflage masks his helmet and his skin tone picks up the pink of the poppy flesh. The photo accompanies an article about poppy production waning in Afghanistan, yet I can't help but see a symbol for we the people in the poppy field, doped up on diversion: celebrity 'news', the social media frenzy, television and its reality shows, warring talking heads, all the useless information we're besieged by 24/7. While time races forward we barely move, as if frozen in a narcotic trance, willingly anesthetized to the brutality of a system controlled by corporate greed as it continues ripping the heart from our country.

Don't let anyone kid you, we are not in a recession. Those of us over a certain income bracket may not feel it but it's a depression on all counts and the U.S. is merely the tip of the Hindenburg as governance by corporate greed continues its worldwide plunder. I know it's old news by now, but when I heard about the recent 'higher education policy' in England, the spine-chilling scope of this hit like a punch. Knowing they could count on a decent education and not having to worry about college tuitions has always been an intrinsic comfort and source of pride for the English. When I first traveled to London, I'll never forget the awe I felt as I spoke with a working class kid in Shepherd's Bush -- a twelve year old -- who was far more articulate than an entire pack of American working class adolescents attempting to string a sentence together.

So, now this hateful American-born corporate greed isn't content with ruining the U.S., it will bully other countries into the stupidity of its own populace in order to continue its global pillaging? Are we proud to be Americans?

How do we dethrone the oligarchy? Every citizen of the US should be obligated to read Thomas Paine's The Crisis, replacing the tyranny of 1776's Britain with America's corporate tyranny. If one were to care about the state of the country instead of playing ostrich and to have sympathy for hardworking people who can hardly feed their families, for the young adults who leave college buried in debt with no job prospects, for the seniors tossed from homes they've dutifully paid for all their lives and lost in predatory lending schemes by bankers who knocked on their doors with unctuous smiles, well... what can one do to help change this tragic system?

In a recent issue of The New Republic, Richard Posner writes: "If we were being honest with ourselves, we would call this a depression. That would certainly better convey both the severity of our problems, and the fact that those problems have no evident solutions." Feel the endless spin.

I agree with your viewpoint Mr. Posner, but, 'no evident solutions'? Really? How about we start with the glaringly apparent? What if the American people begin by demanding:

• the corporate Republicans stand down and end the filibuster(s)?

• the percentage of the income tax we pay actually be reflective of our incomes?

• outsourcing be declared a felony?

• lobbying be declared a felony?

• an end to privatization of public institutions, especially prisons and schools?

• the roll-back of corporate 'rights' of personhood?

• the banks be prosecuted for economic crimes against the people?

and last but hardly least,

• universal health care for all?

How do we, the American people, make demands on our government? Watching Bill Maher take the piss out of Mitt Romney's magic underwear, hardy har, won't change anything, and Rachel Maddow can't do it alone. I'm elated that Obama has come out in support of gay marriage. But every time things start smelling even more rotten than seems possible in Denmark, have you noticed how they trot out the gays as a diversionary Punch and Judy show while our air, food and minds are being poisoned, our pockets picked, our hopes for a decent future for our children fall ever further into ruin...

We certainly have no power to vote directly on the most crucial issues which affect us so profoundly. The 'representatives' we vote in to fight for our interests have pretty much all been bought by the corporate powers who continue to destroy the 99%. Demonstrations for a wide range of causes are crucial and are building a nationwide grassroots movement, but are they really changing anything? The corporations in question own the media and they keep the demonstrations and numbers under-reported if at all; they've learned from the 1960's and 1970's that what we don't hear about, we won't be tempted to participate in. Sad to say but ultimately these demonstrations are akin to a pack of mewling kittens pinned beneath the boot of corporate brawn. On one hand the internet is helping to bring like-minded US citizens together, but its rhizomatic nature keeps all the groups who should be working toward a common goal apart. Divided and conquered are we.

I know this will sound a bit aerie faerie but allow me to indulge myself in a dream. Imagine if we all begin by carrying a pocketbook copy of the Constitution with us, on us. At all times. Imagine we take a walk outside and we read and discuss it with others we meet, with our children. All of America in one exciting communal civics class. The Constitution is the backbone of our democracy. It should be to Americans what the Little Red Book was to Mao's China. Remember the battle cry "No taxation without representation!" Imagine we simply stop paying our taxes. Every one of us. We refuse to go to work. We stop buying anything that isn't absolutely necessary for our survival and we bring the entire country to a screeching halt. We turn off the radio, the computer, the TV and we turn to each other. We the people fight back until the government makes the changes necessary to restore our Constitution, our economy and our democracy.

A very simple solution lies within the words of our country's greatest Republican president Abraham Lincoln in his address to the nation at Gettysburg; "...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The simple solution spoken here is that we highly resolve. The complexity of the solution lies in pulling everyone together, but most of us are too petrified and/or apathetic to do what it actually will take to shake the boot off our backs.

The Republican bullies of today and those who support them shame not only our noble forefathers, but the memory of all those who have lost their lives to protect America's liberty. I want to take pride in being an American. I want the country I was promised as a little girl, the liberty, freedom and justice that my father and your father fought for. May every day be a memorial day as we honor and remember the promise of a country we've all longed for, no matter our apparent differences.

"They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation." - Henry Ward Beecher