'Enemy' Starring Jake Gyllenhall. Directed by Denis Villeneuve.
When Marilyn Monroe first came to Toronto back in the 1950's, she looked around and supposedly said, "I didn't know they had buildings in Canada."
In the film 'Enemy', Quebec director Denis Villeneuve gives us a Canada, a Toronto in fact, that's only buildings. Most of the film plays out in huge high rise apartments that sit under a grey sky. Here, a bearded Jake Gyllenhall a political science instructor at the University of Toronto, finds his double who's an actor.
"We look exactly alike," Adam the instructor tells his double Anthony. Yet they're not totally alike and soon they clash and at the end they switch places. Based on the novel 'The Double' written by Brazilian Jose Saramago, 'The Enemy' moves at times too slowly and too heavily. Maybe scriptwriter Javier Gullon intended this.
Melanie Laurent plays Adam's partner, while Sarah Gadon is hooked up with Anthony. If you hope that both women will bring some light into the film you've guessed wrong. The women don't seem to escape their partners' obsessions. Even the sex scenes seem joyless.
Is 'Enemy' one Quebecker's verdict on Toronto which many Quebeckers and other Canadians in other parts of this country sometimes resent? It could be. I waited for more dialogue and lightness in 'Enemy'. Yet they never showed up.
Denis Villeneuve is a talented director. Still, his previous film 'Prisoners' was far more exciting and riveting than 'Enemy', and you can't blame traffic-choked, smog-ridden Toronto, at least as it appears in the film, for this.
'Enemy' is interesting but no more than that.
Tuesday 25 March 2014
Saturday 15 March 2014
'Ccopying a masterpiece takes time
'Tim's Vermeer' Starring Penn Jillette and Tim Jenison. Directed by Teller.
It takes me about 130 minutes to do a small watercolour painting. Yet when geek Tim Jenison painted a copy of Johannes Vermeer's famous 17th century masterpiece 'The Music Lesson', it took him about 130 hours, or 60 times as long.
For Jenison's painting time just capped off a huge project. Before painting a replica of Vermeer's painting, Jenison spent seven straight months, building a replica of the room where Vermeer's picture took place.
Tim Jenison was a man with a mission but no painting skills at all. Based in San Antonio, Texas, the 50 something Jenison has a theory. He believes that Johannes Vermeer used a mechanical aide to do his painting. Jenison isn't the only one who believes this. Famed British artist David Hockney and art historian Philip Steadman agree. They wrote books on this topic and they show up in the film to encourage Denison in his project.
"You've set out to disturb a lot of people," Hockney says. Art historians, or most of them, don't like this idea at all. Jenison's invention is a comparator mirror, that helps him paint a copy of 'The Music Lesson'. This is the heart of this documentary and the sheer boring hard work of painting, nearly drives Jenison mad. You can't blame him. Still, in the end Jenison survives and proves his idea by completing the task.
Alongside Jenison stands or sits Penn Gillette, helper, comic and friend. His wisecracks and comments give the film a funny side that stands as a relief to all the boring hard work Jenison does. Then there's lovely music by Conrad Pope that accompanies Jenison on his lonely task. Teller, the director, takes us to England and back to the U.S. of A. briskly and quietly. Travel's not the topic here. Work is.
John Berger, the English art critic once pointed out that "the fundamental difference between Vermeer and other Dutch painters is that everything in the interior that he paints refers to events outside the room."
In 'Tim's Vermeer' Jenison builds a room and a painting to go along with it. It's one hell of a task that makes for an interesting film.
It takes me about 130 minutes to do a small watercolour painting. Yet when geek Tim Jenison painted a copy of Johannes Vermeer's famous 17th century masterpiece 'The Music Lesson', it took him about 130 hours, or 60 times as long.
For Jenison's painting time just capped off a huge project. Before painting a replica of Vermeer's painting, Jenison spent seven straight months, building a replica of the room where Vermeer's picture took place.
Tim Jenison was a man with a mission but no painting skills at all. Based in San Antonio, Texas, the 50 something Jenison has a theory. He believes that Johannes Vermeer used a mechanical aide to do his painting. Jenison isn't the only one who believes this. Famed British artist David Hockney and art historian Philip Steadman agree. They wrote books on this topic and they show up in the film to encourage Denison in his project.
"You've set out to disturb a lot of people," Hockney says. Art historians, or most of them, don't like this idea at all. Jenison's invention is a comparator mirror, that helps him paint a copy of 'The Music Lesson'. This is the heart of this documentary and the sheer boring hard work of painting, nearly drives Jenison mad. You can't blame him. Still, in the end Jenison survives and proves his idea by completing the task.
Alongside Jenison stands or sits Penn Gillette, helper, comic and friend. His wisecracks and comments give the film a funny side that stands as a relief to all the boring hard work Jenison does. Then there's lovely music by Conrad Pope that accompanies Jenison on his lonely task. Teller, the director, takes us to England and back to the U.S. of A. briskly and quietly. Travel's not the topic here. Work is.
John Berger, the English art critic once pointed out that "the fundamental difference between Vermeer and other Dutch painters is that everything in the interior that he paints refers to events outside the room."
In 'Tim's Vermeer' Jenison builds a room and a painting to go along with it. It's one hell of a task that makes for an interesting film.
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