a movie about boyhood

"Boyhood' A film starring Ella Coltrane, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke. Directed by Richard Linklater.


   "The child is father of the man," the poet William Wordsworth wrote over 200 years ago.Whatever kind of man, Mason played by Ella Coltrane turns out to be the film 'Boyhood' turns out to be a pretty good flick.
   Spread out over 12 years 'Boyhood' takes place in the state of Texas in the 21st century. When we first meet Mason he's a small child. At the film's end, he's a newly enrolled university student, poised for another romance.
   During these 12 years that director Richard Linklater filmed from 2001 to 2013, Mason's parents played all the time by Patricia Arquette and Nathan Hawke, have split up. They live in separate places at the film's beginning.
   Arquette marries again to a university professor. "This is the reality," he says at dinner time. "I'm a parent." But he's also a dictatorial alcoholic and a wife beater. End of Arquette's second marriage. And she's on her third coupling at 'Boyhood's' end with an Iraqi veteran.
     So goes part of Mason's life as he fights and then bonds with his sister played by director Linklater's daughter, Lorelei Linklater.
     Maybe there'll be more future chapters to this film that stretches out for over 166 minutes. One other theme dominates this film and that's the Texas roads and highways. Like life in all the burbs, much of the film's drama takes place in the back or the front of cars.
That too is part of the charm of 'Boyhood'.   

The revolutionary Jesus

'Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth'. A book by Reza Aslan.


     Friedrich Engels, the longtime friend and confederate of Karl Marx, once noted how the ideas of communism and early Christianity were pretty similar.
    At first mainly slaves and poor peasants became Christians. "Like socialism" writes Sylvia M. Hale, "Christianity promised forthcoming salvation from bondage and misery." .Of course, Christianity said all of this would happen in the afterlife and not on earth. Socialism differed on this point and at one time promised freedom in the here and now.
      Now Reza Aslan, an Iranian-born author has brought back to life the supposedly real Jesus. And Aslan's Jesus is a revolutionary. In the historic Israel of 2,000 years ago there were dozens of revolutionary Jews. They sought to overthrow the Roman rulers and kick out the wealthy Jews who supported Rome. Aslan does a good job here of showing what Roman-ruled Israel was like. It certainly was no paradise.
      Jesus, according to Aslan was a revolutionary. So was John the Baptist who, says Aslan, was Jesus's mentor. And as Aslan points out these two men weren't the only hell raisers around. All these people rallied poor Jews to their side. Yet in the end all these Jews were crushed. From 66 to 70 C.E. the Roman legions wiped out the revolutionary Jews and scattered them to the four corners of the world.
     "In this imaginary Kingdom of God," Aslan says about the hopes of the revolutionary Jews, "wealth will be distributed and debts will be cancelled."" The rich will be made poor and the powerful will be become powerless.
     Aslan's Jesus doesn't believe in non-violence either. He urged the Jews to use violence if necessary.
    But though I like this version of Jesus, is it the true one? Some reviewers and biblical scholars, who are far more knowledgeable on biblical matters than me, have doubted Aslan's story. One other reviewer points out that Aslan's use of the Gospels is inconsistent. On some points he uses the Gospels. At other times he trashes them.
     So if you want a revolutionary version of Jesus, a sort of Hugo Chavez of 2,000 years ago, pick up and read Aslan's book. Yet if you favour a more conventional type of Jesus, stay away from 'Zealot'. I liked the book but it may be untrue.

The Holy Land Revisited

 Bethlehem; Starring Tsahi Halevi and Shadi Mar'i. Directed by Yuval Adler. In Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles.
 


    Do Palestinians and Israelis ever agree on anything? Sometimes they do. For they've both recently made films on young Palestinians who have links to Israeli intelligence agents.
    'Bethlehem' directed by Yuval Adler an Israeli, isn't a love story like 'Omar' that was directed  by a Palestinian. Yet like 'Omar' this film doesn't have a happy ending.
     In 'Bethlehem' the young Sanfur (Shadi Mar'i) is in constant contact with Razi (Tsahi Halevi) an Israeli agent. Yet Sanfur has a brother Ibrahim who is  a       terrorist, at least according to the  Israelis. The Arabs would call him ' A freedom fighter'.
     "You want to search my underwear too?" Sanfur snaps at an Israeli soldier. And a freedom fighter/terrorist  says after Ibrahim is captured, "We will turn Tel Aviv into a big graveyard."
     No Israeli or Arab film I've seen has caught so well the terrible hostilities that erupt between Israeli and Palestinian and between Palestinians and Palestinians as 'Bethlehem' does. Armed men pop up everywhere, all of them ready to kill and be killed. A wonderful scene in a hospital where a wounded Razi plays backgammon with an older Palestinian, tells us graphically what happens to Palestinian informants.
     Yet here I think director Adler goes overboard and weights the film in favour of Israel. Nor is this the only time when the film seems stacked against the Palestinians.
     Still, perhaps this is the only fair viewpoint of many Israeli citizens .
     In any case Sanfur does get his revenge. "Don't ever call me again," Sanfur tells Razi over the phone. Yet the two do get together one last time with tragic results.
      Maybe one day Israelis and Palestinians will live together in peace and harmony. Yet as 'Bethlehem' shows, as did 'Omar', that day may be a long way off.

Violence in Cuba but not from Castro

'3 Days in Havana' Starring Gil Bellows and Greg Wise. Directed by Tony Pantages and  Gil Bellows.


 Be careful of Canadian tourists.
   That's the message Cubans and others may take away after seeing '3 Days in Havana'. Jack Petty (Gil Bellows) seems like a polite Vancouver-based insurance salesman  who comes off the tarmac in Havana looking like innocence itself.
     Bellows played in t.v.'s 'Ally McBeal'  for many years.
     Then he meets a Scotsman named Harry Smith. He's supposedly a travel journalist. Yet played by Greg Wise, a t.v. star from the U.K., Smith in fact is a cocaine-sniffing gangster.
     Co-directors Vancouver's Tony Pantages and Bellows  show us all the sights and sounds of touristy Havana. There's crumbling sidewalks, dance halls full of exotic-looking women, dozens of Cuban cigar smoking people, old model U.S. cars and even synchronized swimmers who do their stuff in near empty swimming pools.
    Cinematographer Peter Stathis has given a wide view of Havana which includes a visit to Ernest Hemingway's old drinking spot. Here, a bronze statue of Hemongway leans on the bar waiting to be served another whisky.
    "You've been playing both sides, haven't you?" one man who follows Petty around, tells him. Soon Petty ends up in the hands of gangsters who nearly beat him to death.
    "You're the unluckiest fuck in this planet," one of his torturers tells him.
     Yet the beginning and end of this film don't seem to fit the film. Some other scenes seem pasted on for effect. And Petty's sudden turning from a regular insurance salesman into a snarling man of action, strikes me as unreal.
     In any case, '3 Days in Havana' is full of fun, drinking, and alas, murder. So Cubans beware! Some Canadian tourists could be dangerous, even if they say, "I just sell insurance."

Villeneuve's Toronto Is A Grey Scary Place

'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.
     
    

'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.
    
     

A Journey Through the Eternal City

'The Great Beauty'. A film starring Tony Seville. Directed by Paolo Sorrentino. In Italian with English subtitles.


   Suppose you want to do a film about Rome. 'The eternal city' someone called Rome. Maybe it  is or was. It was founded by twins Romulus and Remus, who mythology says were suckled by a goat. Then Rome was the headquarters of the Roman Empire.N ow the Pope rules over more than a billion Catholics from Rome and his headquarters in the Vatican City.
     If you're director Paolo Sorrentino you're influenced by the late Federico Fellini. So you cast Jep Gambardella as an ageing writer. For him Rome is a place of beauty. His balcony looks out onto the Colosseum. The film takes us to modern art shows, old sculptures and paintings and memories of a young woman. This is a woman who Jep Gambardella (Tony Seville) loved but never married.
     "Everything around me is dying," he says to his tiny editor. It's true but he and his intellectural friends still keep on smoking cigarettes, drinking, talking and making love.
      Director Sorrentino doesn't serve up much of a plot. Along the way he takes digs at the Italian Communist Party, well at least some political party and the Catholic church. An ageing cardinal talks endlessly about his cooking skills. A 104 year old saint based on maybe the late Mother Teresa can barely talk. A critic out of Fellini's '8 and 1/2' looks for deep meanings in art works. Then there's an abusive author of 11 novels who clashes with Gambardella who's only written one novelette in his entire life.
      If you want to go on a tour of Rome and its beautiful touristy places, 'The Great Beauty' is a film you'll like. "At my age a great beauty isn't enough' Gambardella says. So Rome will fit the bill for him and other old people too.
     Anyway at movie's end, Jep's planning to write another novel after a break of 40 years. Who knows? Maybe he'll pull it off. After all, in the eternal city, hope often springs eternal..