We Can Be Happy Here

Revolutionary Road
2008, dir. Sam Mendes. 1 hour 59 minutes
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates

In 1999, British theatre director made his film debut with American Beauty, a film about, among other things, suburban ennui. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and since then, suburban ennui has been seedy ground for many a film, from We Don't Live Here Anymore to Life As A House to The Ice Storm to Little Children. It's said that original book that started this whole genre in Richard Yates' 1961 novel Revolutionary Road, which has now been made into a film by none other than Sam Mendes.

Leo and Kate, in their first appearance together since Titanic 11 years ago, star as a young couple who start out with dreams of high life, but end up in the Connecticut suburbs with a cookie cutter house and cookie cutter lives, just like every one else.
The happy facade has slowly fallen away over the course of almost a decade, and they decide to move to Paris. They even have passage booked on a steamboat (not that anyone wants to be on a boat with DiCaprio and Winslet), but as often happens, best laid plans ...

The two leads give as good performances you're going to see this year, but the film is just so relenting in its misery that it's hard to feel good about what you're watching. It's likely than everyone watching will be uncomfortable because either a) they don't want to become like this couple, or b) they're worried they already are. The best performance comes from Michael Shannon, who plays a young man from a mental institution who tries to befriend the couple. His character is only person in the film who is perceived as not normal within the world of the story, yet it is only her who can truly articulate the obvious truths of every other character. In any year that Heath Ledger hadn't accidentally killed himself AND played The Joker, Michael Shannon would be winning an Academy Award. If you can stomach it, this is a film to see, but it's not a good time, and probably not a date movie.

4 stars out of 5.

Saw Sunday night with Steph and Paddy at the World Exchange.

Life Understood Backwards

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2008. Dir. David Fincher. 2 hours 47 minutes.

Saw Benjamin Button on Boxing Day. Had a diet Coke.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the story of man (played by Brad Pitt) who is born as an old man, and goes through his life aging backwards, becoming more youthful as everyone else around him gets older. The film takes its name, premise, and protagonist's name from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but nothing else.

The film will probably remind many of Forrest Gump, and with good reason, as they both had the same screenwriter. Benjamin Button, I would argue, has a bit more depth to it. While Gump seemed to revolve around the theme of chance and fate, Button is more directly about life and how we travel through it. Although I am only 27, I think I can safely gauge that I will be happy to trade my youth for wisdom, an oppurtunity that Button does not seem to get. Forrest Gump traveled through life as an idiot, essentially; Ben Button, while growing younger, develops what I would describe as a vapidity. This is not a flaw of Brad Pitt's performance, but actually a strength, since I feel that loss of accumulated wisdom is the point of the story.

Cate Blanchett does a strong job as Button lifelong love, Daisy, especially in the framing scenes at her deathbed, where she recounts the tale to her daughter, played by Julia Ormond, who I would love to see make a comeback into mainstream films (or any films at all) since she seemed to disappear in the late 90's. There's been awards talk for Taraji Henson, who plays Button's adopted mother, but I can't say that her performance did much for me.

Overall, I liked Benjamin Button quite a bit, and it really made me ponder my own life, which is all you can ask of any film.

5 stars out of 5

Who Wants to Be $501,959.70 CDN-aire?

That's how much 20 million Indian Rupess is ... so not even half a million US dollars. Still, it's a lot for a slumdog from Mumbai, I guess.

Paddy and I caught Slumdog Millionaire last night at the World Exchange. I drank a bottle of Coke Zero. The movie is about a young man named Jamal who grew up in the slums of Mumbai and Bombay in India, who ends up winning 20 million Rupees on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Officials believe that he must have cheated, so they interrogate/torture him into telling them how he did it. Gradually, he reveals how each question is related to important events from his life, from his early childhood right up until present day.

The film has a frenetic energy that has eluded most this year's films, and while some may complain that it's all too convenient, I think that that may be the point. The movie strives to show how fate will lead us on our path to getting what we need in life. Dev Patel, as the oldest of the Jamals, is fantastic in his role, though I'm not sure why he's getting awards and award nominations as a supporting actor, since he's clearly the lead in this film. Overall, a great time at the movies, and, with apologies to Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, the best end credits dance sequence all year. (It's kind of a Bollywood film, so of course there has to be a dance sequence).

4 and a half stars out of 5.

Slumdog Millionaire
2008. 1hour 56minutes.
dir. Danny Boyle. Star. Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Freida Pinto.