Tag: Paul Haggis

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Film Features Film/TV

Third Person

What turns a comedy into a drama? It’s a good question that Third Person writer-director Paul Haggis would never deign to answer. But it’s a question the film raises, and you might come up with a few theories after watching it.

Like his Oscar-winning 2004 film Crash, Third Person is a sprawling and ambitious network narrative powered by pretty people in big cities trying to connect. One story set in NYC follows a downtrodden former soap opera star (Mila Kunis) engaged in a custody battle with her ex-husband, a world-renowned finger painter (WTF?) played by James Franco. A second story, which features a sad-sack corporate lackey (Adrien Brody) who slowly and justifiably grows infatuated with a mysterious beauty he meets in a bar (Moran Atias), takes place in Rome. The third story concerns a successful writer (Liam Neeson), who, when he isn’t staring meaningfully at the MacBook on the desk in his gigantic Paris hotel room, is carrying on an affair with a woman (Olivia Wilde) young enough to be his daughter.

As Third Person‘s stories unfold, a few provocative cross-cuts combine with some odd coincidences and repetitions to suggest a deeper connection among these people.

Wilde, however, stands out. Like Cameron Diaz, Wilde uses her intense, playful sexiness to go two places instead of one; the way she lounges about on couches and beds also heightens her cutting coolness, intelligence, and emotional distance. Wilde’s aspiring writer and gossip columnist character may be smarter and more attractive than anyone around her, but even she can’t breathe the necessary life into the perfectly sculpted and obviously written dialogue she’s given.

When the script’s literary aspirations mix with the rough-draft incompleteness of its interpersonal encounters, Third Person‘s deliberate yet roughed-in feel starts to undermine the weightier moments. Big emotional scenes can’t be trusted, and any bite or zip in smaller moments is lost; every meaningful frame, gesture, and slow-motion action sequence starts to look funny. Humorless ambition may be the currency of dictators and football coaches, but it makes for lousy art.

Third Person

Opens Friday, July 18th

Studio on the Square

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Film Features Film/TV

Homefront wounds exposed.

How am I to feel about Paul Haggis? The creative force behind two of the last three Best Picture Oscar winners (writer of Million Dollar Baby and writer/director of Crash), Haggis is hotter than anybody not named Apatow in Hollywood. But Million Dollar Baby left me feeling sucker-punched with melodrama in the last act, and Crash left me feeling bullied into a corner and browbeaten with lofty message.

But Haggis is also the guy who helped breathe life into James Bond in Casino Royale and acquitted himself admirably as co-author of Clint Eastwood’s WWII diptych (Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima).

And now he’s made In the Valley of Elah. Inspired by actual events, the plot is about a soldier, just back from Iraq, who has gone missing, and the concerned father, Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones), who investigates his disappearance. The movie kicks up all kinds of dust about combat stress, the horrors of war, the loss of patriotism, and parents coming to grips with the wages of their convictions. This was, I told myself going in, the exact kind of movie Haggis would ruin for me. I’m pleased to report I was wrong.

The bulk of the film is dressed up like a mystery. Hank is a classic red-stater, of the strong and silent mold: former military investigator, pickup-truck driver, prays before meals, drinks Beam. When Hank gets the call from the Army that his son has gone AWOL, he doesn’t believe it: The son he raised would never have been derelict in his duties. Hank’s wife Joan (Susan Sarandon) is a bundle of nerves over it. In the course of Hank’s search, he enlists the aid of Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), a townie cop near the army base.

Jones is perfectly cast. The script fails him in tracing Hank’s growing disillusionment with his country and its institutions, but Jones sells each moment he’s given. Also, apparently, when Theron tries to look plain and not ethereally beautiful, it means she’s serious about a role. It’s the equivalent of Robin Williams’ beard. In Elah, her acting’s mostly fine, but some of the dialogue is too tin for her ear.

In the Valley of Elah is solemnly anti-war (little “w”). Its depictions of soldiers broken by the experience are universal. But Haggis sets the film very specifically — November 1, 2004 — making it a historical drama. American flags fly in front of every house and on cars. Bush’s voice echoes on the radio, and the Iraq War fills TV screens. One character says, “They shouldn’t send heroes to a place like Iraq.” In this sense, the film is anti-War (big “W”). Haggis doesn’t successfully spell out what makes Iraq different from any other war, especially with Vietnam looming a generation ago. But I believe that he believes it. And, in 2004, the cuts were fresh enough to wound faith.

In the Valley of Elah

Opening Friday, September 21st

Multiple locations

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Jones, Sarandon Get a Taste of the South

Director Paul Haggis (Oscar winner for Crash) spent four days shooting scenes for his new film, In the Valley of Elah, in the town of Whiteville, just east of Memphis, in Hardeman County. But according to the film’s stars, Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon, it wasn’t all work. As Jones and Sarandon recently told MoviesOnline, there was time too for some off-camera perks. And that means, in the Mid-South, pork chops and greens (plus music and moonshine).

TOMMY LEE JONES: You know, there was a café – you’ll like this. Our trailers were parked on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Whiteville, Tennessee. And around the corner there was a place called the Dove of Paradise Café, and really, what made the whole trip worthwhile were the pork chops and the greens.

SUSAN SARANDON: Some good music there too.

TOMMY LEE JONES: Yeah, pretty good music.

SUSAN SARANDON: Outside of Memphis, I went to a club and it was really good.

TOMMY LEE JONES: I don’t get out very much. I remember y’all went.

SUSAN SARANDON: It was at the very end of the shoot. … [T]he old guy whose club it was died and his widow wanted me to know. I just got a message on my service.

TOMMY LEE JONES: Oh.

SUSAN SARANDON: Yeah.

TOMMY LEE JONES: Was it down on Mud Island?

SUSAN SARANDON: It was outside of Memphis. I have no idea where I was … .

TOMMY LEE JONES: It was outside of Memphis?

SUSAN SARANDON: Yeah, yeah, it was right outside the city. It wasn’t when we were on location. Although I did get a lot of homemade fudge and some moonshine that somebody gave me. I got a lot of presents there.

TOMMY LEE JONES: So now, you really understand what acting is all about. Pork chops and moonshine.

SUSAN SARANDON: It’s the perks.

TOMMY LEE JONES: Yeah.

Valley of Elah is scheduled to open in Memphis on Friday, September 21st.