Silent Light, The
Savages, The Living Wake
How refreshing it
was to see three films that offered such stylistically
different takes on a similar subject-matter during my
fifth day attending AFI Fest! As the title of this piece
suggests, all three of these pictures deal with the
tormented souls living in dysfunctional families and, to a
lesser extent, the healing that they discover through
their kinship. Still, Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light,
Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages, and Sol Tyron’s The
Living Wake couldn’t be more different from one
another. Not only do they all take place in radically
different locations (geographically and socially) on the
globe; they are also miles apart in terms of plot,
circumstance, and theme. This is a testament to the
versatility and openness of the medium of film as a whole.
It was a joyous experience for me to be able to watch each
picture on the same day as its counterparts, an
opportunity that allowed me to juxtapose the works in my
mind and come to better understand all of them in the
process.
Reygadas’
Silent Light has been almost universally lauded by the
so-called “D’Angelos” (Internet-based film critic Mike
D’Angelo and his 100-point-scale-crazed followers) on the
festival-circuit and, while the movie is undoubtedly for
hardcore cineastes only, it stands as a breathtaking work.
I had my doubts that I would love the picture going in
and, as I watched its first shot, a near ten-minute
elapsed-time take of a sunrise, I was ready to deem it a
super-tedious art-film. Soon, however, this notion faded
in my mind. As Reygadas moved on to the second shot, the
third, and so on, I quickly became enraptured by his
cinematic spell. Silent Light unfolds in a
blindingly hypnotic manner, building to a striking
crescendo of a climax and then an unforeseen concerto of a
resolution. It is a work as unforgettable as it is quietly
intimate, earning every second of its aforementioned first
shot (a meditative nod to the Biblical concept of
Creation) and every second of its last, a similar take in
which the sun sets.
The film takes
place in a sparse Mennonite community in Mexico that is
comprised of a homogeneous population of Plautdietsch-speaking
people of European descent. The protagonist is Johan
(Cornelio Wall), a small farmer who, on the surface,
carries out a rather simple life. He lives for his God and
for his wife, Esther (Miriam Toews), and two children. But
Johan’s life has become a complicated existence, the
viewer learns during an intimate exchange that he has with
a friend early on in Silent Light. Johan has fallen
for a woman outside of his marriage, ice cream parlor
worker Marianne (Maria Pankratz). While Johan has been
upfront about the affair with Esther and vows to bring an
end to it, the extramarital relationship has caused him a
painful amount of inner emotional turmoil and has
devastated Esther despite her obvious denial.
Reygadas sticks
with each scene to an uncomfortably masterful extent,
capturing the mounting anguish straining Johan’s psyche
throughout. There is not a whole lot of dialogue in
Silent Light, but Reygadas is content in the fact that
his characters’ actions speak louder than their words. He
captures every discourse of the characters in gritty
detail, but also never forgets to act artistically
compassionate towards them. Viewers experience the
tension, suffering, and (in the third act) ultimate
miracle of what unfolds in the plot exactly how it
happens, with unflinchingly naturalistic detail. It seems
like a critical cliché to claim that “the direction is so
good that it will make you feel like you’re there!” but
the phrase really applies here.
The only inherent
manipulation that Reygadas exercises over the film’s story
is symbolic in nature, and it doesn’t at all distract from
the central story. In addition to deeply understanding
human tragedy, Silent Light also displays a
stunning thematic command over the Biblical principle of
redemption, expressing this through figurative imagery.
(The presence of groups of three is particularly notable
in the film, indicating the metaphysical presence of the
Holy Trinity.) In fact, Silent Light’s Biblical
roots are so richly defined that one could make the case
that the movie exists as a Biblical parable in and of
itself.
In the lead role,
Wall aids Reygadas in depicting Johan’s progression
throughout the narrative to an immeasurable extent. The
performance is not exactly one that invites raves—it is
too subtle in nature for that—but its startling power is
undeniable. Wall’s work acts in much the same way as the
rest of the parts of Silent Light, building upon
itself to ultimately create a source of both emotional and
thematic depth. It is also something of a miracle that the
actor so effortlessly functions as a means by which
Reygadas is able to vocalize the film’s aforementioned
Biblical subtext. In this regard, Wall’s simultaneously
affected and affecting face-work in the film’s
second-to-last scene, which offers perhaps its most
revelatory moment, is particularly impressive.
Silent Light
admittedly requires the viewer to exercise a bit of
patience, a necessity that many may find tasking, but this
undeniably pays off once Reygadas’ spell takes hold. The
film’s content may make it a far cry from a fairy tale,
but it unfolds in such an entrancing manner that one could
easily mistake it for one. To comment on every single one
of the layers that Reygadas develops in this review would
be a foolish endeavor on my behalf; part of the joy of
Silent Light lies in its ability to captivate the
viewer by the sheer force of its imagery and the intimacy
of its characters’ lives. This is an ambitious,
accomplished motion picture.
Jenkins’ The
Savages might be less grave in tone and more darkly
humorous than Silent Light, but it deals with a
topic of equal emotional heft: the deterioration of a
parent’s health. Despite its success as a black comedy and
its uplifting messages about the miracle that is life,
there’s no denying that this is a sad, sad movie. Still,
the difference between The Savages and the average
tearjerker of this sort is the warmth and humanity
displayed by its characters. Not only is this the reason
that the movie’s subtle sense of humor is able to work
effectively, it is also why the movie succeeds as a drama.
Jenkins has given filmgoers a motion picture that they can
really be thankful for this Holiday season, one that never
skirts around the hard truths of life but understands them
with such compassion that it is impossible not to embrace.
Jon (Philip
Seymour Hoffman) and Wendy Savage (Laura Linney) don’t
know what to do with their ailing father Lenny (Philip
Bosco), who is slowly dying of Dementia. Lenny’s
girlfriend of many years has just kicked the bucket and,
having signed an agreement revoking any ownership rights
he might normally have established over her home or
property (“a pre-nup without the nup,” as Jon understands
it), he has nowhere to go and no one to take care of him.
After much debate between Jon and Wendy, who have not been
in regular contact with each other for years and find it
hard to agree on anything, Lenny is moved from his prior
residence of Sun City, Arizona to a nursing home near
Jon’s Buffalo, New York home. As Lenny’s condition
deteriorates, his son and daughter forge a bond that makes
them feel closer to each other than they ever had been
before.
Lenny’s
devastating condition is not atypical for a man of his
age, but this does not make it any less tragic. Jenkins
rightfully does not shy away from this truth, depicting
the man’s medical problems in unflinching detail from the
get-go. In one of the first scenes in the film (when
Lenny’s girlfriend is still alive), the viewer is forced
to confront the severity of Lenny’s case of Dementia. When
his girlfriend’s pompous caregiver asks him to flush his
excrement down their toilet, which he had neglected to do,
Lenny becomes enraged at the man’s carelessness and
smothers the feces all over the bathroom wall. It is a
harrowing sequence, with a great amount of power resting
in Bosco’s stunningly realistic performance. Equal
poignancy is achieved in a later scene, in which Lenny
finally realizes that the nursing home he is staying in is
not a hotel, as he had assumed, when Jon asks him if he
would like to be buried or cremated when he dies.
As much as The
Savages may have to say about the American medical
system, it functions primarily as a touchingly human tale.
After all, Lenny is just a supporting character who
fulfills a predictable path as the film progresses. It is
Jon and Wendy who are the lifeblood of the film’s story,
the individuals who the viewer relates to and seeks solace
in. In this regard, The Savages is something of a
minor-masterpiece, mainly because of the perfect presence
of Hoffman and Linney in the roles. Even if the two actors
aren’t the manically depressed people that their
characters are, the viewer can’t help but find so much of
Hoffman and Linney’s own personalities incorporated in Jon
and Wendy. As a result, The Savages becomes very
easy to connect with and, in turn, to discover a bit of
oneself in. Whether this quality is a testament to the
leads’ abilities as actors or to casting director Jeanne
McCarthy’s knack for picking them, I dunno, but it doesn’t
really matter. As moviegoers, we can simply be grateful to
know that Hoffman and Linney found these roles and made
them their own.
As depressing as
my description of The Savages may make the movie
sound, I must assure you that it is as much a
crowd-pleaser as it is a serious drama. For audiences to
assume that the film’s subject-matter makes it an entirely
unbearable experience would be a grave mistake. As I
previously hinted, Jenkins’ deep realization of Jon and
Wendy’s characters allows for some terrifically-written
dark humor to surface in the situations that they find
themselves in. In fact, The Savages boasts a few
laugh-out-loud sequences that will momentarily make the
audience forget the work’s pervading melancholy. In
addition, the film finishes amidst a beautifully pro-life
message, ultimately leaving said audience appreciative of
life’s many beauties. Grim as it sometimes may seem,
The Savages will find its way into the hearts and
minds of viewers, resonating in a manner that is both
poignant and gentle.
Over the course
of the few film festivals that Tyron’s The Living Wake
has played (this one included), the movie has found itself
a respectably-sized cult audience. How or why it has done
this, I do not know. While I didn’t hate the film, I
certainly didn’t observe much promise in its sitcom-level
writing or invisible production-values. At its best,
The Living Wake is a passably diverting comedy. At its
worst, it is a boring and pointless exercise in stale
humor. For the bulk of its duration, the film is able to
boast of the former, but what good is a mere passable
diversion anyway? The goal of a filmmaker should be to
make a work of greater consequence than the average
release, something that Tyron has most definitely not done
with this picture.
The Living
Wake does offer audiences one miraculous feature in
the form of an acting performance, but this performance
does not stand out for the reasons that one might expect.
It belongs to lead Mike O’Connell who, against all odds,
somehow turns absolutely insufferable protagonist K. Roth
Binew into a tolerable character. O’Connell’s amiable
acting here may not be great by definition, but it’s just
as appreciable as, say, Forest Whitaker’s Oscar-winning
turn in last year’s The Last King of Scotland.
(Then again, to his discredit, O’Connell also co-wrote the
film’s script, which is equally condemnable for its
invention of the character as his performance is
respectable for its invigoration of him.)
K. Roth lives in
a small country town, presumably in New England, where he
has the reputation of being a drunk and a fool. K. Roth,
on the other hand, believes himself to be an unparalleled
artistic genius, riding around pompously on the
bicycle-powered rickshaw of personal assistant and
chauffer Mills Joquin (Jesse Eisenberg) and living what he
purports to be a dignified life. His brother and mother
have both disowned him, viewing him as the unrealistic
jerk that he actually is. As you might’ve guessed by now,
K. Roth is more than a bit delirious.
The Living
Wake’s plot takes off when K. Roth is diagnosed with
an unidentified disease by his questionable doctor, which
will unexplainably cause him to die by the end of the day.
Naturally, K. Roth seizes the opportunity as a means to
promote his inner-genius. After all, all great artists
only become truly recognized once they are dead, right? K.
Roth and Mills facetiously spend the day riding around and
handing out fliers to K. Roth’s wake, which he will
conduct while he is still alive so that he is able to
engage attendees in a series of short performances before
his coffin is sealed shut. As they do this, the pair makes
sure to put K. Roth in a position that will allow him to
be remembered in the afterlife, a process that includes
such activities as submitting his many pathetic attempts
at great literature to the local library and rekindling
love between he and an (literally) old crush. All the
while, Mills chronicles the events in his
soon-to-be-published biography of K. Roth.
It would be
impossible for me to fully describe The Living Wake’s
hammy, sardonic tone in this review. A serviceable
comparison would be that which might result from the
combination of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Still, despite the
movie’s uniqueness in this respect, it proves hardly
involving otherwise. Even though O’Connell manages to turn
K. Roth into a tolerable character, he is certainly far
from likable, making it hard for the viewer to invest
their emotions in The Living Wake. There really
isn’t any reason to care about any of these people because
their very tongue-in-cheek nature makes them seem entirely
disposable. Accordingly, the rest of the movie also only
comes across as a small blip on the radar. This is a
close-to-worthless, if occasionally entertaining little
picture that will soon likely call the dusty shelves of
video-stores its home. There, it will find a fitting
audience, one with expectations far lower than those
associated with films seen in a theatrical setting.
Despite Day
Five’s weak finish, it certainly provided me two films
that I was able to drool over. When Silent Light
and The Savages are released in theatres, I
wholeheartedly recommend seeing them (although I recognize
that the first will only be enjoyed by select filmgoers).
Upward and onward to Day Six!
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
(post date: 11.27.2007)
