Movie Review: Heal the Living

Heal the Living *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Katell Quillévéré.

Written by: Katell Quillévéré & Gilles Taurand based on the novel by Maylis De Kerangal.

Starring: Tahar Rahim (Thomas Rémige), Emmanuelle Seigner (Marianne), Anne Dorval (Claire Méjean), Bouli Lanners (Docteur Pierre Révol), Kool Shen (Vincent), Monia Chokri (Jeanne), Alice Taglioni (Anne Guérande), Gabin Verdet (Simon), Galatea Bellugi (Juliette), Karim Leklou (Virgilio Breva), Finnegan Oldfield (Maxime), Théo Cholbi (Sam), Alice de Lencquesaing (Alice Harfang).

 

If I told you that Heal the Living is a medical melodrama – about a young man in a coma and how his accident effects the doctors, his parents, the organ donation coordinator, the person who receives his heart, and her family, you may well be able to guess what happens in the film. The events in Heal the Living are fairly standard in terms of melodramas of this sort – and the film is undeniably, and unapologetically, a melodrama. Yet, it’s a melodrama in a lower key than we normally see – a film that takes its story and its implications rather seriously, and doesn’t have the drama go at a fever pitch. The film is what Roger Ebert used to call a hyperlink movie – where you click on one character, and see their world expand, and the connections to other characters. It starts with the young man himself – sneaking out of his girlfriend’s bedroom late at night, and skate boarding down to meet his friends for a carefree morning of surfing. It’s on the way back when a car accident happens – director Katell Quillevere doesn’t show the accident, but instead shows a giant wave coming at the car – disaster looming in plain sight.

 

From there, the movie expands – the doctor who tries to save the young man, but knows it is hopeless – all he can do is keep him alive on machines in the hopes that his organs can be used to save others. The organ donor coordinator (Tahar Rahim), who has to talk to the grieving parents, and hope they will grant permission. Those parents (Emmanuelle Seigner and Kool Shen), a separated couple brought back together by their shared grief. Flashbacks show the sweet romance the young man (Gavin Verdet) had with the girlfriend we only saw briefly at the beginning of the film (Galatea Bellugi). We then move to Claire (Anne Dorval), a musician with a failing heart, who reconnects with an old lover (Alice Taglioni), while also dealing with her two grown sons (Finnegan Oldfield and Theo Cholbi) who have different reactions to their mother’s condition. We know how this story – at first unconnected to the rest – will eventually intersect with everyone else. And that’s just a few of the characters Quillevere will focus her camera on during the course of the film – although everyone she does, even if only for a scene or two, become real people, with inner lives of their own.

 

The film glides effortlessly through these characters and their stories in a way that feels natural. Stylistically, the film can be quite bold at times – the opening sequence has both the feeling or freedom and melancholy for example, and when it comes time for the medical procedures, Quillevere doesn’t turn her camera away. The surgery scenes are not bloody in a horror movie shock way, but in a way that recognizes the blood that is inevitable, and the intricacies of the proceedings. She finds even quiet, touching moments here though – like when Rahim tells the surgeons to stop for a minute before proceeding, so he can place ear buds in the young man’s ear – playing a song handpicked by his girlfriend. Music plays a big role in the film – the great Alexandre Desplat provides a wonderful score, underscoring the powerful emotional moments, without overdoing it, a central performance piece when Alice Taglioni plays a beautiful, complex piece on the piano – unaware that her lover is watching for the audience, and the final moments, when Quillevere plays David Bowie’s Five Years – a beautiful, poignant way to end the film, made more so by the recentness of Bowie’s own death. The cast is uniformly excellent – my favorite perhaps being the great Anne Dorval – frequent muse of Xavier Dolan – as the woman preparing for her own death, which she knows could happen at any time.

 

The movie marks Quillevere as a director to watch for – it isn’t her first film, but it’s the first of hers I have seen, and will hopefully find the audience it deserves. Perhaps the predictably of the narrative hurts it just a little bit, but Quillevere nails the tone – hopeful and melancholy at the same time. Melodrama is often looked down upon as a genre – to a certain extent, I get that, as overblown melodrama can be painful to watch. But when a film is as sensitive and intimate as Heal the Living, I don’t mind it at all.

 

Note: I saw this film at TIFF 2016, and am posting this as Film Comment listed April 14 as its release date. As far as I know, the same version I saw is the one being released.

Movie Review: Song to Song

Song to Song **** / *****

Directed by: Terrence Malick.

Written by: Terrence Malick.

Starring: Rooney Mara (Faye), Ryan Gosling (BV), Michael Fassbender (Cook), Natalie Portman (Rhonda), Cate Blanchett (Amanda), Lykke Li (Lykke), Bérénice Marlohe (Zoey), Holly Hunter (Miranda), Patti Smith (Herself), Val Kilmer (Duane).

 

With Song to Song, Terrence Malick has made the best of his loosely related trilogy of films also including To the Wonder and Knight of Cups. While the films all pale in comparison to the five films – Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World and The Tree of Life – but are still films that only Malick could have, or would have, made. I know and sympathize with the directors fans who would rather him do something more narratively based again – with those say that he has now completely devolved into self-parody and navel gazing. No, I take that back – fuck those people. The more I see of this style from Malick, the more I like it – perhaps Song to Song isn’t really the best of the three most recent films (not counting his doc, Voyage of Time) but that because I’ve seen the last two films, I better knew what to expect this time, and how to watch the film. The film is far from perfect – it is flawed to be sure, and repetitive, but it is an honest attempt by a great artist of reaching out and interacting with the world around him – one he doesn’t fully understand. I too, would love to see Malick make something as brilliant – as perfect – as Badlands or The Thin Red Line again. But I also don’t mind when Malick does something like this.

 

Song to Song takes place in Austin, in the middle of the music scene. No, the music scene in Austin is nothing like this – and I feel confident in saying this, even though I have never been to Austin, or been a part of any scene. It doesn’t matter. The main character is Fate (Rooney Mara) – a natural for Malick’s style (t’s easily the best performance in these trilogy of films) – a singer/songwriter of some kind (he never learn what kind) – who falls for another musician – BV (Ryan Gosling), who has started to work with her boss, Cook (Michael Fassbender) – a music executive who seduces everyone, and destroys almost as many. The three of them become close – BV never knowing that Faye and Cook used to be something more than they are now. Eventually, things fall apart between all them as they often do. There are other lovers – Cook marries Rhonda (Natalie Portman) – then degrades and destroys her. BV dates the more high string Amanda (Cate Blanchatt). Faye dates a French artist, Zooey (Berenice Marlohe). The narrative brings all of these people low – both figuratively and literally (characters literally spend a lot of time lying down on floors in the second half of the film – not as upright in the beginning). The film is told in what has become known as Malick’s signature style in these films – a lot of repeated imagery, women seen from behind, the world seen over the shoulder of broad shouldered men, twilight hour beauty bumping into the cityscapes. Whispered voiceovers, and half heard conversation. There are fractured family connections and a rather old fashioned, Christian point-of-view, which doesn’t necessarily judge the characters for their digressions, but does show how it leads them down some dark paths.

 

If I like Song to Song more than To the Wonder or Knight of Cups, I think it’s because the characters came more into focus for me in this one. Ben Affleck is a (deliberate) blank in To the Wonder, which is really more the story of his wife (Olga Kurylenko, brilliant in that film) who is destroyed by her marriage to him. Christian Bale plays an empty shell of a person in Knight of Cups, who drifts from one meaningless relationship to the next – it’s fascinating, but it’s hard to care for him. Here, you do care for, at least, the two main female characters. Portman has less screen time than Mara, but she delivers one of the best performances of her career as Rhonda – the teacher/waitress with a big smile and light in her eyes when she meets Cook – and is bowled over by him. He almost cannot take her joy, and destroys her – something Portman makes clear by the end. Mara is the main character, and one hopes she’ll work with Malick again – he knows precisely what to do with her strange onscreen quality. This is another performance where she makes the case that she’s one of the best currently working – her Faye is a confused, searching mess – drifting from one thing to the next, not as an empty shell, like Knight of Cups, but in a legitimate search. Fassbender is also a Malick natural – he was told to base his character on Satan, and he is able to show that through his physical premise. I’m not sure I want to see a return Malick engagement for Gosling – who skill is often verbal, which isn’t really of use to Malick, although it is fun to imagine this movie is what his La Land character was up between the time Stone left him and he opened his club in L.A..

 

No, this movie isn’t perfect. Not every interlude works – in this case, I really don’t know what purpose Blanchett’s character serves. She is, as always, gorgeous, and Malick knows how to shoot her at her best, but that whole subplot dragged. As with the previous two films as well, the film grows repetitive – showing us things two or three (or four or five) times we didn’t need to see as often.

 

Yet, I also think that Malick working in this vein makes it impossible to make a “perfect” film – and we shouldn’t demand one from him. Nor should we try to fit him inside the box he clearly doesn’t want to be in. Malick’s recent trilogy of films are his most problematic, most inconsistent of his career. But isn’t it exciting to see a director in his 70s continue to push himself, continue to explore? If you don’t think it is, that says more about you than it does about him.

Movie Review: The Boss Baby

The Boss Baby ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Tom McGrath.

Written by: Michael McCullers based on the book by Marla Frazee.

Starring: Alec Baldwin (Boss Baby), Steve Buscemi (Francis Francis), Jimmy Kimmel (Dad), Lisa Kudrow (Mom), Tobey Maguire (Adult Tim / Narrator), Miles Christopher Bakshi (Tim), James McGrath (Wizzie / Elvis Impersonator), Conrad Vernon (Eugene), ViviAnn Yee (Staci), Eric Bell Jr. (Triplets), David Soren (Jimbo).

 

I read a story book – or two, or three – every night to my two girls (ages 5 and 3) – and it’s a wonderful time. The best kids’ books have a wonderful premise, and clever execution, and are over in the span of five minutes or so. It may feel natural for Hollywood – bereft of ideas as we’re always told – to adapt these children’s books into movies – it works for novels, right? – But more often than not it doesn’t. The Boss Baby is the latest example of a clever children’s book that doesn’t work when it’s blown up from a book that takes five minutes to read, into a movie you spend 98 minutes watching. That’s a lot of additional material to come up with – and to be honest, the strain shows. Yes, The Boss Baby has a fine premise – as a book, I’m sure its good (I’m going to look for it to read to my girls) – but as a movie, it’s one of those mild distractions for kids and adults alike, that never really gets off the ground.

 

The premise though is killer – cast Alec Baldwin as the voice of a baby wearing a business suit, who shows up one day and treats his new family like a demanding boss treats his employees – conducting meetings at all hours, making unreasonable demands on time, etc. Poor seven-year-old brother Tim sees this new arrival like an employee would see the company who just bought out his own – as someone who may look to replace him, because after all, he’s become redundant. Then Tim discovers that his new brother isn’t what he seems at all – he isn’t a regular baby, he’s really from the Management Group at Babycorp. (located in heaven – it’s kind of confusing, but the movie doesn’t dwell on it, so let’s move on) – and he’s been sent to spy on Tim’s parents – because they work for Puppy co. – and puppies are stealing all the love from babies – and as they are about to launch a new “product” that could eliminate babies forever. All of this is narrated by a grown up Tim (Tobey Maguire) – who tells the story like you would to a child, which I think it probably a smart choice (it makes the leaps in logic seem plausible, because it’s clearly all “dad humor” – the type of thing I pull on my girls all the time (the five year old is onto me though).

 

Baldwin is a pure joy in the role – the type of casting that is obvious and inspired at the same time, because he truly is the only voice you’d accept here. Yes, he’s basically doing Jack Donaghy as a baby, but that premise itself is funny. When the movie works at all, it’s because of Baldwin, who leans into all the references to 30 Rock or Glengarry Glen Ross (he knows why he was cast) with apparent glee. It’s too bad that the film has to force this premise and character into a plot at all – especially a not inspired one about a rivalry between puppies and babies, and that casts Steve Buscemi as the voice of the evil corporate bad guy – that casting is as obvious as Baldwin’s, but not nearly as inspired, mainly because no matter how good a voice actor Buscemi is (and Monsters Inc. and Monster House prove he’s great) – he cannot do anything with what he’s given.

 

The Boss Baby is a Dreamworks animation film, and it shows. Throughout the years, Dreamworks often has inspired premises for their films, but fall down in the execution – taking the easy way out, and rushing through production, when a few more passes at the screenplay stage could have turned out something better. The Boss Baby isn’t a horrible film – both my girls liked it well enough, and it didn’t annoy me or give me a headache like the worst animated films for kids do – but that’s not very high praise, is it?

Classic Movie Review: The People Under the Stairs

The People Under the Stairs (1991)

Directed by: Wes Craven.   

Written by: Wes Craven.

Starring: Brandon Adams (Poindexter "Fool" Williams), Everett McGill (Man / "Daddy" / Eldon Robeson), Wendy Robie (Woman / "Mommy" / Mrs. Robeson), A. J. Langer (Alice Robeson), Ving Rhames (Leroy), Bill Cobbs (Grandpa Booker), Kelly Jo Minter (Ruby), Sean Whalen (Roach).

 

Wes Craven always said he wanted to do more kinds of films that “just horror” – but Meryl Streep Oscar vehicle Music of the Heart (1999) aside, he never really did. He was pigeonholed into the horror genre from his brilliant debut – Last House on the Left (1972) onwards, and because he was so good at making horror films, he just kept right on doing them. Yet, perhaps that desire to do different kinds of films accounts for why Craven was so successful in horror – because many of his films either have different genres mixed in with the horror, and are different from each other. What holds them together is that Craven really did excel in tapping into something primal in his best, scariest films – something truly unsettling.

 

The People Under the Stairs, Craven’s 1991 film is not one of his best films. It’s made in the period after A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – his out-and-out scariest film and before Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), in which Craven kicked off his wonder meta-horror phase (made more popular with Scream), in which Craven’s output was inconsistent to say the least. At its best, The People Under the Stairs is unsettling and freaky – and has a political point-of-view addressing class and race (a rarity in horror films). The film is also a bizarre comedy though, and at times it goes so far over-the-top in terms of being goofy that it takes you out of the  movies, and doesn’t just break the tension, it shatters it completely.

 

The film is about a young, black kid named Fool (Brandon Adams) living in a poor neighborhood – specifically in a rundown apartment building, with his mother lying in bed suffering from cancer, and a sister already with a kid, and working as a prostitute. They missed their last rent payment – and a weird clause says if they do that, they either have to pay triple the rent, or face eviction. They are the last tenants in a building their landlords want to tear down to build condos. The one chance he has to earn the money is to accompany Leroy (Ving Rhames) on a job – they’re going to break into Fool’s landlord’s house, and steal some valuable coins. Leroy, his partner and Fool all get inside the house – but what they find there is not what they expected. The landlords are a deranged couple who call each other Mommy and Daddy (Everett McGill and Wendy Robie – fresh from playing another strange couple on TV’s Twin Peaks) and who are clearly demented. That doesn’t even mention their daughter, Alice (A.J. Langer) – or the other people in the house.

 

At its best, The People Under the Stairs can be an extremely creepy movie. Like the recent Don’t Breathe – a film that shares more than a couple plot points with The People Under the Stairs – the film uses the space in the house remarkably well, and sets up one creepy moment after the next. Unlike Don’t Breathe though, the film gets increasingly silly as it starts to reveal what it’s really about, and makes little sense on basic levels when you think about it. Once the secrets get revealed, the film goes from creepy to rather silly.

 

Having said this, there is still much to like about the film. I do love Wendy Robie’s performance as “Mommy”, who goes wildly over-the-top, but does so in a way that doesn’t make her any less scary or creepy – both rather increases that. Poor McGill isn’t so lucky, as the movie requires him to don a leather “gimp” suit, and get hit in the balls a few times for laughs. At his best, his performance is demented and creepy – at its worst, it’s just goofy – and that hurts the film through no fault of McGill’s.

 

Still, I do appreciate much of the film. The setup is good, and there are fine moments throughout. I also do appreciate that Craven is actually trying to address issues of race in the film – something that horror movies (still) do all too infrequently. And perhaps we can chalk the film up as a learning experience for Craven. His next film would be New Nightmare – which has its own funny moments, but is better integrated into the whole – and Scream was just five years away. No, The People Under the Stairs isn’t one of Craven’s best films – but it’s an interesting one just the same.

Movie Review: Five Came Back

Five Came Back **** / *****

Directed by: Laurent Bouzereau.

Written by: Mark Harris.

Featuring: Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Paul Greengrass, Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep.

 

Mark Harris’ Five Came Back is one of the best film books of recent years – and the only reason I say one of the best instead of the best, is because his Pictures at a Revolution is even better. It chronicles the wartime lives of five America filmmakers – Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston George Stevens and William Wyler – who all left Hollywood at the peak of their careers to spend years documenting WWII for American soldiers – and eventually, the public. They didn’t have to – many didn’t, including that symbol of all-American manhood John Wayne – but they felt they had a duty to serve. The films they made were undeniably propaganda, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t good. Germany had Leni Riefenstahl, Britain had Humphrey Jennings – America had these five.

 

Laurent Bouzereau’s documentary about these five filmmakers runs three hours, and could easily had been two to three times longer, and I would have been just as enthralled by it. As a history lesson about what these men were before the war, what they did during the war, and how it changed the forever afterwards, the film is never less than fascinating – although Harris’ book delivers all that information, and much more, as well. What makes this documentary truly special – what makes it a companion piece worthy of sitting alongside the book, not just a substitute for those who don’t like to read – is that Bouzereau gets five contemporary filmmakers to analyze the filmmakers themselves. Francis Ford Coppola talks about John Huston, Paul Greengrass talks about Ford, Steven Spielberg talks about Wyler, Lawrence Kasdan talks about Stevens, and Guillermo del Toro talks about Capra. Some of the pairings make complete sense – Spielberg analyzing Wyler for example, as both are Jewish filmmakers who don’t always foreground their religion, even as it remains an element of their work. Greengrass makes sense when you consider how proud Ford was of his Irish roots. I’m not quite sure how Stevens and Kasdan connect – but Kasdan is still insightful into his work. The only disappointment is Coppola, who doesn’t delve as deep into as fascinating filmmaker like Huston. Surprisingly, del Toro is far and the best in talking about Capra – something that initially feels like a strange choice, but makes perfect sense in retrospect. Del Toro clearly loves Capra, but isn’t blind to his flaws – he isn’t afraid to call Capra politically confused (he was), or call out some of the more questionable elements to some of Capra’s films. But he appreciates him in the big picture – out of all of the five filmmakers under discussion, its Capra who I see in a new light more than any of the others (and wonder of wonders, the film was able to get me misty during clips of It’s a Wonderful Life – a film I’ve seen so often that it usually doesn’t do that anymore).

 

The film is also a treasure trove of archival footage – as well as containing ample footage of the films themselves – an advantage it clearly has over the book, which has to describe everything. Particularly devastating is footage that Stevens shot as they liberated Dachau – an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life. The director of pre-war comedies would never make another one after the war. There is a ton of footage here, all assembling wonderfully well. The film is split into three one hour episodes, all of which moves by with a brisk pace – it certainly doesn’t feel like three hours. I honestly do think the film could have been significantly longer. The film doesn’t dive in deep into somethings – like Huston PTSD before PSTD was  a thing doc Let There Be Light for example, which is covered in the doc, but deserves even more time. I do think Harris’ book found a little more to criticize than this film does.

 

But those are minor quibbles for what is mainly a great doc – one of the best docs on filmmaking to come out in years, and a worthy companion piece to a great book.

Movie Review: Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell ** / *****

Directed by: Rupert Sanders.

Written by: Jamie Moss and William Wheeler based on the comic by Masamune Shirow.

Starring: Scarlett Johansson (Major), Pilou Asbæk (Batou), Takeshi Kitano (Aramaki), Juliette Binoche (Dr. Ouelet), Michael Pitt (Kuze), Chin Han (Han), Danusia Samal (Ladriya), Lasarus Ratuere (Ishikawa), Yutaka Izumihara (Saito), Tawanda Manyimo (Borma), Peter Ferdinando (Cutter), Anamaria Marinca (Dr. Dahlin).

 

The trailers for this live action remake of Ghost in the Shell were brilliant – colorful and full of eye-popping imagery, it suggested a movie that would be visually stunning from beginning to end, and the trailer had just enough dialogue to hint at something deeper than typical sci-fi action movies. Now, having seen the movie, I still feel like I’ve only seen a trailer for an interesting movie. This is a film that is all surface flash, with nothing underneath. That isn’t always a bad thing, but it is here, because even that surface flash becomes monotonous throughout the film’s runtime.

 

The movie is based on the 1995 film anime film (itself based on a manga) of the same name, which was one of the films that helped to bring anime to North America in larger numbers (as my anime loving wife likes to say, when she started collecting, you had to work to find anything – now it’s everywhere, so even if it remains a cult item, it’s much larger now than it used to be). The story takes place in a futuristic Japan, where almost every human as cyber enhancements – to help you see or hear better, make you stronger, etc. The Major (Scarlett Johansson) is different – she is essentially a human brain, input into a robot body. She is the first of her kind, apparently getting the best of both the human and robot worlds. Apparently, the thing to do with this one of a kind specimen, is to assign her to some sort of anti-terrorism task force – where she is best at what she does. But lately, she’s getting flickers in her mind – flickers of her past human life, flickers that perhaps her superiors are lying to her. As her and her tram search for the terrorist Kuze (Michael Pitt) – and she starts communicating with him – she starts to see things in a different light. Perhaps she shouldn’t fully trust the giant, multinational corporation that built her.

 

I was disappointed when I recently re-watched the 1995 anime film for the first time in a long time recently. That is a film full of ideas, but man, does it drag. The film stops, often for minutes on end, to have long, drawn out conversation about technology, humanity, etc. – often delivered in monologue. There is good stuff in that film to be sure, but I wouldn’t call is the anime masterpiece most seem to. I have a feeling that the filmmakers behind this live action remake agree with me somewhat – because the film doesn’t take as much time to slow down and explain itself. The problem now is that everything moves too quickly – the film never slows down long enough for anything to truly sink in, to truly have an impact.

 

As the major, Scarlett Johansson is seemingly the perfect choice (except for the fact that she isn’t Japanese) – as her role here easily fits into the work she’s been doing in recently years in film like Her, Under the Skin and Lucy – characters who are more than human, but struggle with that question of humanity. Unfortunately, this time, the film basically asks her to be robotic for much of the performance – it’s interesting to see Johansson physically in the role – the way she moves, especially her walk, is different in an interesting way. But she plays the role too blankly for it to have an impact. The other key role is played by Michael Pitt – but he’s clearly bored by it. Perhaps Pitt doesn’t show up in movies more often not because he isn’t talented – he is, extremely so – but because he has no ability to hide his boredom with inferior material, which this clearly is. In key supporting roles, Juliette Binoche does her best to add some humanity to her role as the Major’s creator, and Takeshi Kitano is his badass self as her boss – although his performance just reminded me of how long it’s been since he made a truly good movie.

 

The film is directed by Rupert Sanders, who to his credit, does give you some eye-popping moments throughout. He’s better at the smaller stuff – strange characters, like the robot geisha, or setting rather than the larger CGI laden cityscapes, which is basically just CGI soup, and looks like every other cityscape created with CGI. As a storyteller, he just isn’t very good – he’s too obsessed to get to the next set piece, to spend time with what anything on screen actually means.

 

The film also is more than a little unsettling in terms of its racial politics. The film has been controversial since they cast Johansson, since she isn’t Japanese, and that criticism has never really gone away. I think something interesting could have been done with the movie, even with Johansson in the role, but the film chooses to completely ignore her race – which makes scenes with her biological mother leave a bad taste in your mouth. I don’t necessarily think a Japanese actress had to be cast in this role – but I do think that if you don’t, the movie has to something to justify that decision.

 

In short, Ghost in the Shell is an occasionally visually stunning bore. There are moments that work, but not many. I appreciate the effort the filmmakers too to try and make the film look different from other blockbusters – but it didn’t really add up to very much in the end.

Movie Review: The Discovery

The Discovery ** / *****

Directed by: Charlie McDowell.

Written by: Justin Lader & Charlie McDowell.

Starring: Jason Segel (Will), Rooney Mara (Isla), Robert Redford (Thomas), Riley Keough (Lacey), Jesse Plemons (Toby), Mary Steenburgen (Interviewer), Ron Canada (Cooper), Richard O'Rourke (Marvin), M.J. Karmi (Janice), Paul Bellefeuille (Pat Phillips), Adam Khaykin (Oliver).

 

The key ingredient to the films of Charlie Kaufman – as both writer and director – than many of his imitators miss is humor.  If you are going to dive headlong into the human mind, and explore it, and identity, and what makes us human the way Kaufman does, you at least have to have the ability to laugh about it a little bit – that laughter will make the heady stuff go down easier. Charlie McDowell’s last film, The One I Love, which starred Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss as a couple who go to a cabin to try and repair their marriage, and find, well, something interesting there – had that humor, which is why that film remains an underseen gem. His new film, The Discovery, doesn’t have it – which is why the film is a morose bore.

 

The film takes place a few years after Thomas (Robert Redford) has scientifically proven that there is an afterlife – which has led to millions of suicides worldwide. Thomas doesn’t much care – he has retreated from the world, and now lives on a large compound with his son, Toby (Jesse Plemons) and his “followers”. Proving there is an afterlife isn’t enough for Thomas – he now wants to prove just exactly where it is we go after we die.

 

Yet, Thomas isn’t the main character in the film. That is Will (Jason Segel) – Thomas’ other son, estranged from him for a few years, now returning home, for reasons that never really become clear. On the fairy that leads to the small island where his father lives, he meets Isla (Rooney Mara), who is whatever the depressed version of a manic pixie dream girl is. The two hit it off, but go their own ways why they reach the island – but the next day, it is Will who comes to Isla’s rescue when she tries to commit suicide. He brings her back to the compound, where she’s interested in Thomas’ work – and decides to stay – as does Will.

 

The Discovery is a film that tackles big themes, but makes the mistake in thinking that because it does so, it has to be morose the whole time. Segel, primarily known as a comedic actor, but desperate to change that (his first step was in his not bad performance as David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour, seems to think that being a serious actor requires you to be joyless in each and every scene you’re in. His Will is a monotone bore. The rest of the cast is better – Mara’s Isla doesn’t have much depth, but she gives her some anyway, and I quite liked Redford, who doesn’t sell you that what he’s saying is real, but does sell you on the fact that he believes it. Riley Keough, so good in American Honey last year, is very good in a small role her as well.

 

The Discovery also tries hard to stack one narrative twist and turn on top of another, so that by the time the end comes – which is specifically designed to blow your mind – you’re on to the films tricks, and they no longer work on you. I think that McDowell is a talented writer/director – The One I Love showed that – but The Discovery is a pretty big misfire for him. The film was is desperate need of some humor – or some life.