Craig J. Clark Watches a Lot of Movies
I believe in truth in advertising. I also believe in keeping things short. I watch a lot of movies. This is where I'm going to write about them. Let's roll.
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Sunday, March 14, 2010
A hundred is enough. Once you've counted a hundred, all the other hundreds are the same.
There are a number of Peter Greenaway films that have, for some reason or another, never been released on DVD in Region 1. One of those is 1988's Drowning by Numbers, which is one of his most accomplished efforts -- a film that starts out completely bewildering, but everything fits together in the end, which isn't always a given with Greenaway's work. Even so, the film is so densely layered and the characters act so strange at the outset that any first-time viewer is advised to just let the images wash over them (along with Michael Nyman's typically scintillating score) until they're able to get a handle on things.
As one might expect from a film entitled Drowning by Numbers -- particularly one written and directed by Peter Greenaway -- there are a number of deaths by drowning, all of them carried out women with the same name, Cissie Colpitts. The first, played by Joan Plowright, impulsively drowns her unfaithful second husband (Bryan Pringle) when she catches him having a bath with another woman. The second, played by Juliet Stevenson, is Plowright's daughter and is unhappily married to a businessman (Trevor Cooper) whose habit of going for a swim in the ocean too soon after eating makes him prone to stomach cramps. The third, played by Joely Richardson, is Stevenson's daughter and is a championship swimmer in training for the Olympics when she marries a young man (David Morrissey) who doesn't know how to swim, but is capable of getting her pregnant. Surely this means that a fourth Cissie Colpitts will be along presently to continue the family tradition.
The other main characters in the film are Madgett the coroner (Bernard Hill), who helps the three Cissies cover up their murders by classifying them as accidents, and his young son Smut (Jason Edwards). Hill has his own quirks, which include keeping sheep and inventing unusual games with obscure rules, a trait he has passed on to Edwards, who counts everything -- including all the violent deaths (of man and beast) in the area -- and sets off fireworks upon the discovery of each one. He also catalogs moths and other insects and is in the habit of taking photographs which eventually get the attention of the local police. Then there's the odd little girl named Elsie (Natalie Morse) who's always seen skipping rope at night in her party dress, counting -- and naming -- the stars. Of course, to name something does not mean that one knows it, and to number it simply means that one has put it in some kind of order. The thing about life (and death) is it's never as orderly as all that.
The reasons we go to war always matter.
If he hadn't died of a heart attack three years ago, my father, Charles L. Clark, Jr., would have turned 65 today. Over the last few years of his life he and I got into the habit of catching the occasional movie together, usually a war film, although we did branch out into other genres. As I recall, our first was the director's cut of Das Boot when that was re-released in theaters. From that point on, if a movie came out that he wanted to see and my mother had no interest in it, he would call and we would make an evening of it. From the first time I saw the trailer, I had the feeling that Green Zone would have been one of those films, and since it just came out this weekend I figured I owed it to him to check it out. Good pick, Dad.
Reuniting director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon (who had previously teamed up for the last two Bourne movies), Green Zone is a solid action film and a potent political thriller -- a pretty great combination, if you ask me. Set in 2003 in the early days of the Iraq War (before George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"), Brian Helgeland's screenplay places Damon in the role of the leader of an Army unit searching for WMD in the middle of what was still considered an active war zone. It's an important mission and one that is becoming increasingly frustrating for Damon and the soldiers under his command since they come up empty at each and every site they visit. The only conclusion he can come to is that there is a problem with the intelligence they're using, but nobody wants to hear that.
Actually, that's not strictly true. CIA Middle East expert Brendan Gleeson is also looking to get to the bottom of things, but he's up against glad-handling Pentagon official Greg Kinnear, who isn't about to let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a good war. Meanwhile, sitting on the sidelines is Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Ryan, who was among the journalists who was snookered by the Pentagon, thus allowing the Bush administration to make the case for war in the pages of her paper. The most pivotal roles in the film, though, are played by Khalid Abdalla, as an average Iraqi citizen pressed into service as Damon's translator, and Yigal Naor, as a high-ranking Ba'athist general (he's the Jack of Clubs) who's supposed to have the inside line on the WMD situation. No wonder Damon is so keen to bring him in, even if he has to go "off reservation" to do so.
Recently Seen in Theaters:
The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, 2010)
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton, 2010)
Cop Out (Kevin Smith, 2010)
The Wolfman (Joe Johnston, 2010)
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