Movie Review: The Hummingbird Project

The Hummingbird Project ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Kim Nguyen.

Written by: Kim Nguyen.

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg (Vincent Zaleski), Alexander Skarsgård (Anton Zaleski), Salma Hayek (Eva Torres), Michael Mando (Mark Vega), Johan Heldenbergh (Amish Elder), Ayisha Issa (Ophelia Troller), Mark Slacke (Tasso Casilieris), Sarah Goldberg (Mascha), Frank Schorpion (Bryan Taylor), Kwasi Songui (Ray Engineer), Conrad Pla (Agent Santana), Julian Bailey (Elliot), Jessica Greco (Dr. Bloom), Anna Maguire (Quant Jenny), Ryan Ali (Quant Elias), Amanda Silveira (Amy), Kaniehtiio Horn (Barbara Barmaid). 

 

Watching The Hummingbird Project is like watching a mishmash of other, better movies that never really settles into its own thing. Does this want to be The Social Network? The Wolf of Wall Street? Is it a comedy? Is it a teary drama? Is it a morality tale? It kind of wants to do everything, and that of course is a surefire way to end up being not much of anything. That’s a shame, because there are two fine performances at its core, and this type of thing is usually right up my alley – but here, it just never really comes together.

 

The basic premise is that it’s 2011, and the Zaleski cousins – motor mouthed negotiator Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) and genius level programmer – probably somewhere on the spectrum – Antonu (Alexander Skarsgard) think they have a way to shave one millisecond off of the time everyone else on Wall Street can get information from Kansas to New York and back again. That may sound like nothing – but if used properly, it could make them hundreds of millions of dollars a year. How? Basically by knowing what stocks people want to buy, and racing out and buying them for pennies less than the buyer is willing to pay, and then selling it to them milliseconds later. Each transaction makes you very little money – but because you do this hundreds of thousands a time a day, it all adds up. They add nothing to the process of course – but just skim a little off the top, so little in fact, that no one really cares but it all adds up. They plan on doing this by drilling a direct line between Kansas and New York – and I mean direct direct – a complete straight line through whatever obstacle stands in their way. By making no turns, the information will travel through the fiber optical line quicker. To do this means a mammoth feat of drilling – through everything – and buying strips of land out of everyone along the line. Of course they sign – it pays well, and the line will be buried, so they will never even know it’s there. Of course, someone will come along sooner or later with a fast way – but even doing this for a year or two, will mean they have enough money to retire and be super, super rich.

 

Jesse Eisenberg is essentially in The Social Network mode here – smart, determined, and doesn’t give a crap what you think of him. He’s more than a little bit of asshole – he is capable of being charming, and if things are going well, he is. But when things go wrong, he can turn nasty – like when the Amish who own some land in their way don’t want to sell. This is the type of role that Eisenberg can do in his sleep – and he does it well – but you kind of want to see something more from him, which I guess, the movie tries to show when it gives him a deadly illness that requires immediate treatment – advice that, of course, he ignores. But it doesn’t add much. I was more impressed with Skarsgard, who unlike Eisenberg, is clearly cast against type here. Bald, quiet and socially awkward Skarsgard’s Anton lives almost completely inside his own head – obsessed with getting his code up to snuff, to the point where he can shut out the world around him for hours, days, weeks at a time. It’s a fine performance – with a great little dance number late in the film. The two other major roles in the film aren’t as good. It’s good to see the talented Michael Mando from Better Call Sault in a completely different kind of role – the guy in charge of drilling the line – but it’s kind of a thankless role. And Salma Hayek, as Vincent and Anton’s old boss – who doesn’t like being beat at her own game, and is determined not to let that happen by any means necessary. That it is a woman in this role that would be at home in Scorsese’ The Wolf of Wall Street is interesting – but the problem is that the fact that she is a woman is pretty much the only interesting thing about here.

 

The film was written and directed by Canadian Kim Nguyen – whose best film remains his breakthrough film, Rebelle (War Witch) from 2012 – about a female child soldier in Africa. Since then, he’s struggled to make something quite as interesting – Two Lovers and a Bear (2016) never really comes together, and I still haven’t seen his Eye of Juliet – which wasn’t well received either. Here, he definitely seems to be trying to come up with something more mainstream – more entertaining – than his previous films. I will say that The Hummingbird Project is never really boring. But it never really comes together in a meaningful way either. And I’m someone who devoured Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys (a real life story for people like this) – and normally loves stories like this. Here, it keeps seeming like as soon as the film is heading somewhere interesting, it stops and goes off in a different direction.

Movie Review: Two Lovers and a Bear

Two Lovers and a Bear

Directed by: Kim Nguyen.

Written by: Kim Nguyen.

Starring: Tatiana Maslany (Lucy), Dane DeHaan (Roman), Gordon Pinsent (Bear's Voice), John Ralston (Lucy's Father), Johnny Issaluk (Charlie), Joseph Nakogee (Peter), Kakki Peter (Sheriff John Tovok), Jennifer Soucie (Johanna).

 

Kim Nguyen’s Two Lovers and a Bear is that odd film that is both too strange and yet not strange enough. There are surreal moments in the film, and yet as a writer and director, Nguyen tries to ground those moments in his characters psyches – to explain the strangeness he is showing. This undercuts those moments, that don’t haunt us the way they should – and also takes screen time away from proper character development. As the title implies, the film is about two lovers – and at first one seems to go insane, and then get almost instantly better, then the other goes insane, and never really gets better – dragging the other character, and the movie along with them. The problem is that we never really do get to know either character – the film is too ambiguous in some sense, and then explains other things to death. It’s an interesting and ambitious film – but one that doesn’t really work.

 

The film takes place in the Canadian arctic. Lucy (Tatiana Maslany) is dating Roman (Dane DeHaan) – and both seem fairly happy in their relative isolation. It is Lucy who threatens this balance – as she gets into school “down south” – and wants to go, which either means she leaves Roman behind, or he abandons his life to go with her (something he says he will not do). Roman’s transition from depressed to possibly suicidal and insane – and then back again – is perhaps the biggest single problem with the movie. One scene he’s literally talking to a bear  - something he does repeatedly throughout the film – and is oddly the one thing the movie never bothers to explain (is it a sign of his delusion, or can he really do it – oddly, the movie seems to imply both). Roman is eventually institutionalized – but then Lucy, who up until this point has seemed fairly normal – throws away everything she’s worked for to come and get him. They then decide to go South together – but having no money to fly, get on their snow mobiles and head out on what is almost a suicide mission. It’s on the trip that the full extent of Lucy’s own mental problems come out.

 

Nguyen’s last film – Rebelle (War Witch) was nominated for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar, and was, honestly, more effective at blending together the real world of the lead character, and the perhaps spiritual world that she was able to see – either because she had special skills, or because she was delusional. While that film was about child soldiers in Africa, and this one is a story of two lovers in the arctic, they are closer together then they appear – as both films include aspects that cannot easily be explained away. But while War Witch was effective in blending these elements together, Two Lovers and a Bear is not. Perhaps it’s because this time, Nguyen has two lead characters, both of whom are experiencing things outside the realm of normalcy – Roman with his talking to bears, and Lucy with the visions of her abusive, now deceased, father. Neither character has quite enough room to develop, because Nguyen spends time first with one, then the other – and when one character is experiencing the delusions, the other seems perfectly normal. By the time we reach the end – where the characters seem to, at least on some level, be sharing a delusion, Nguyen hasn’t properly set this up.

 

The two lead actors do the best they can with the material they have – it’s more an issue of writing than performing, which gives us the sense of whiplash between the characters. Lucy appears completely normal – right up until she isn’t anymore – and Maslany excels at those scenes, but isn’t able to sell the transformation. DeHaan is somewhat shakier – he’s really the lead here – because of how often he has to go back and forth.

 

There are things to recommend Two Lovers and a Bear though. Visually, the film is quite good – giving us a unique view of the arctic we usually do not see, particularly the isolation the characters feel. There is one sequence – in an abandoned military facility – that seems to be pointing in a direction the film doesn’t really go (namely, horror), that is effectively creepy. But mainly, the film doesn’t really work, because the two leads at the core of the movie don’t ever seem believable. By the time we get to the end – and there are more false endings to this film than anything since Return of the King – I felt like the film had completely lost sight of its goals. Is what the two leads do romantic in a grand, delusional way – or simply stupid? I don’t think even the movie knows for sure.

Movie Review: War Witch (Rebelle)

War Witch
Directed by: Kim Nguyen.
Written by: Kim Nguyen.
Starring: Rachel Mwanza (Komona), Alain Lino Mic Eli Bastien (Commandant Rebelle), Serge Kanyinda (Magicien), Ralph Prosper (Le Boucher), Mizinga Mwinga (Grand Tigre Royal).

Writer/director Kim Nguyen makes an interesting decision in War Witch, which both helps and hurts the film. The film is centered on Komona, who is a young girl who is kidnapped from her home in Africa, forced to kill her parents, and is trained to be a child soldier. The entire film is told from her point of view – she is thrust into a war she doesn’t understand, and as such neither does the audience. I’m not sure what country the movie is supposed to take place in, or what the War Lord she is forced to work for is fighting for – and neither, I suspect, does Komona. The movie doesn’t offer us any insight into this aspect of its story – which might have worked had the film given us more a sense of Komona. However, she is so traumatized by what happens to her that she doesn’t make a very good entry point, even into her own story. Watching the film I was frustrated, because I felt that I was constantly on the outside of everything in the film.

The performance by Rachel Mwanza – who was only 13 when she shot the film – does an excellent job at conveying this trauma, and all her confusion. She is taken from everything she knows and forced to kill people for reasons she does not comprehend. She falls in love, in a way, with a slightly older boy – known as the Magician (Serge Kanyinda) – although her notion of what love constitutes is very childish. She becomes the favored “War Witch” of the Grand Tigre, the war lord who kidnapped her, because her dead parents appear to her in visions, and direct her away from danger. And when the Grand Tigre’s woman dies, he takes Komona as his “lover” as well – although what he does to her is clearly rape – until she exacts a fitting (and brutal) revenge on him.

I admired much of War Witch – the performances are about as good as they can be, given that the movie is locked into Komona’s point of view, and she doesn’t really understand herself, or anyone around her. The handheld camera work is impressive in that it never becomes vomit inducing, and keeps the action clear.

Yet, I cannot help but think that the film doesn’t quite work. There is an contradiction in the central character that I could never quite resolve – she sees so much, and grows up so fast in many ways, yet remains such a naïve child in other ways and I just never quite bought that.

The film was the most acclaimed Canadian film of 2012 – I put off watching it for far too long, unsure if the material was something I really wanted to tackle. I’m glad I saw the film – I think Nguyen is a talent to watch for in the future – but this time I cannot quite bring myself to add to the praise the film has received. It marks Nguyen as a talented filmmaker to watch – but for me, this time he never quite pulled off what he was aiming for.