La Boheme (an opera review post)

Roughly translated (okay, not so roughly), "la boheme" means "the bohemians." It's loosely based on characters from a series of short stories by the 19th century French novelist Henri Murger, and, when I say "loosely," I do actually mean it.

Giacomo Puccini, having been himself a starving artist at one point in his life, felt a great affinity for the characters of his opera and, evidently, caused a lot of frustration with his librettist because he kept changing the words. He seemed to be a believer in the "ask forgiveness, not permission" philosophy. You can't argue with the results, at any rate. La Boheme is one of the top operas in the world more than a century after it's introduction and has been the most performed opera at the San Francisco Opera House.

As such, any production of it seems to have a really high bar it needs to meet with the critics. This being my first viewing of it, I have no such bar, and I thought this production was great.

First, the set was great.They did a great job of putting together something that looked like a studio apartment being shared by four poverty-stricken artists: a poet, a painter, a musician, and a philosopher. But, even better! The apartment piece of the set separated and turned around to form the city streets. It looked nice and gave the right feel.

Then, the cast was great. All of them. The opera has a lot of comedy in it despite the fact that it's a tragic love story and, as such, requires some serious acting. This is definitely not an opera that would work if the performers just stood in place when they were singing. They were all great. I can't even pick out a favorite.

Here's where it really works for me:
When Picasso first went to Paris, he was exactly one of these starving artists. His first winter was so hard that he was forced to burn all of the paintings he had thus far produced so that he wouldn't freeze to death. It's a horrible thought. The opera opens with Rodolfo and Marcello burning the manuscript to one of Rodolfo's plays just so that they can have a little heat. This production did a good job of making that real, of making the poverty and the desperation that goes with it real.

Not just in that they had no fuel for the fire and no food but, also, they had no access to healthcare. You could make a case for this being a play about poverty and how people with no access to healthcare deal with illness: They try to pretend it isn't there. Rodolfo knows immediately upon meeting Mimi that she's not well, but what are they going to do? There's no money for a doctor. And Mimi? Evidently, she's been dealing with her illness for so long that she's able to pretend even to herself that she's perfectly fine -- "It's just a little cough." -- so she's surprised, later, to find out she's sick.

But, you know, no one has ever died from lack of access to healthcare.

The only complaint, and it was a small one, was from my wife. She said Mimi and Rodolfo spent too much time looking at the audience during their love duets rather than at each other. I didn't notice, but, because they provide viewing screens for those of us up in the nosebleed section, I may have been watching the screen instead of the stage and I wouldn't necessarily have noticed that particular issue.

What I can say for certain is that La Boheme is definitely an opera I want to see again. In fact, I would go back to see it again today if I could, and we just saw it last night (as I write this, not as you read it). Puccini is my wife's favorite opera composer, and I can definitely see why. I don't know that I have a favorite at this point, but Puccini definitely wrote some of the most memorable opera music ever written.

Whiplash (a movie review post)

This is the kind of movie that might mean something if it was based on something that actually happened but, as it is, it's almost meaningless. Which is not to say that the message -- greatness comes from adversity -- isn't true, but making up a story to prove your premise doesn't prove anything. I mean, I could make up a story to "prove" that eating spinach gives you massive forearms, but it doesn't mean anything without something real or true to back it up. So, you know, great: A fictional kid becomes a great drummer because a fictional band director is a supreme asshole to him.

And I'm not trying to knock the impact of a fictional story, but it usually helps if your protagonist isn't also an asshole if you want the story to be "inspirational." It also helps when the crisis moment is at least remotely believable. So let's walk through that. Yes, there will be spoilers.

Andrew has worked his ass off to get the drum part for a significant competition. He is by far the best player, but the director, Fletcher, is threatening to give the part to someone else in order to get Andrew to be even better. So far so good.

On the way to the performance, the bus Andrew has taken gets a flat tire which makes him late. This is awfully convenient (read: contrived), but it does happen. I suppose it does, anyway. In all my years of riding school buses (similar in most respects to paid public transportation), we never once had a flat tire. I did have a couple of buses break down, though, so I'll concede the possibility, We're still okay.

Andrew, in an effort to make the performance on time, runs to a conveniently located (convenient in that he could get to it on foot) car rental place. Okay, so I have a bit more of an issue with this. In my experience, car rental places aren't just scattered around randomly like gas stations. We're beginning to stretch things, but I'll still go along.

Andrew leaves his (drum) stick case at the rental agency.
Really?

Andrew gets to the place where they are performing. He's past call time, but he's in time to play for the performance. Fletcher is pissed that Andrew's later and threatens to give the part to another of the drummers. They have an argument, but Fletcher, evidently, agrees to let Andrew play... except that Andrew doesn't have his sticks, and Fletcher refuses to let him borrow some from one of the other students. He may play if he can be back with his sticks in five minutes.

Okay, I have a really difficult time accepting this bit. Fletcher wants to win the competition. He is completely about winning. Andrew is by far his best drummer (probably his best musician), but he's going to let someone else play instead? It just doesn't fit with Fletcher's personality. He would wait until after the performance to punish Andrew for his tardiness rather than risk losing the competition.

At any rate, Andrew dashes back to the car, speeds back to the rental place, grabs his bag, and speeds back... and he has a car accident. A bad one. The car rolls several times and stops upside down. Yet, Andrew crawls from the wreckage, covered in blood, and runs, sort of, the last few blocks to where they are performing. And I'll give them that. As unlikely as it is, sometimes people do do extraordinary things. However, it completely falls apart after that...

Andrew is bleeding from his head, blood is dripping off of one hand, and his clothes are ripped and shredded. In short, he looks like he was just in a car accident. He makes it all the way through the building without anyone stopping him. He makes it onto the stage without anyone stopping him...
Wait a minute. His band is already on stage, evidently, just waiting for him. During a competition, the band is sitting there with no one at the drums just waiting for... him.
1. Um, we're supposed to assume that the judges are just waiting patiently for some indefinite amount of time for the late drummer to show up. The drummer who ran out of time before he even made it back to the car rental agency.
2. We're supposed to assume that Fletcher did not put in one of the reserve drummers he had on hand. One of them was good. Not as good as Andrew, but he was good. That we're supposed to believe this of Fletcher, that he is just waiting for Andrew, is even more unbelievable than that the judges are waiting for Andrew.
3. When Andrew walks onto the stage, covered in blood, no one interferes. He just goes and sits down at the drums and starts playing. No one -- NO ONE! -- is like, "Dude! You're covered in blood! What happened? What are you doing?" Not any of his bandmates, not Fletcher, not any of the judges or any of the people watching. Um, I'm sorry... That's insane that we're expected to believe that he just walks out onto the stage in that condition and no one stops the proceedings to see what's going on.
4. Andrew isn't able to keep up; he's dripping blood all over the drums; he drops one of the sticks and has trouble retrieving it. Finally Fletcher does something. He comes over and orders Andrew off the stage. Not nicely. I don't care how big of an asshole you are; if your best drummer is bleeding out on stage, you have more concern than to come over and yell him off the stage.
5. Andrew loses it, about the only thing in this sequence that makes any sense, and attacks Fletcher right there on the stage in front of everyone. And gets expelled for it. What? Seriously? We're expected to believe that a kid who was just in a car accident, bleeding from a head wound, and was just screamed at by his director during a performance got kicked out of school for losing control?

Basically, this whole sequence dance along the Cliff of Belief like a blind man, almost falling, almost falling, almost falling until, finally, falling right down into the Sea of Disbelief far below. Nothing that comes after this really works, including the scene where they are convincing Andrew to testify (for lack of a better word) against Fletcher about his abusive ways. So they know they way Fletcher treated people and they still expelled Andrew? Riiight...

So, yeah... I really couldn't buy into the movie. I get that music is competitive and can be harsh, but, honestly, Damien Chazelle has admitted to basing Fletcher on one of his band directors, so the whole thing comes of as sort of a bitter, "You wrecked my life," kind of thing. I don't feel bad for him, nor did I fee bad for Andrew. Andrew was an arrogant asshole. And, well, if the point of the movie is that you only become great through adversity, then we see that Chazelle gave up and walked away from music. As the movie points out, if you become discouraged enough to abandon the thing you love, you were never meant to be great, anyway, so Chazelle needs to just get over it.

Oh, and the recurring story about Charlie Parker (an actual jazz player) isn't accurate. Chazelle re-wrote that to fit his movie.

All of that said, J. K. Simmons is fantastic as Fletcher. He is the kind of villain that you hate and respect at the same time. Then hate some more. The best supporting actor nomination for him is well-deserved.

Miles Teller is also pretty good. Not great, but he was good. And good at not being likable. Even when wanting him to succeed, you also wanted him to fail. Basically, it's a movie of not likable characters. The only two people in the movie who are decent human beings are Andrew's father and Andrew's (short-lived) girlfriend.

It's not a movie I would recommend to, well, anyone, and it doesn't belong on the best picture nomination list. It's more deserving than The Theory of Everything, but that's not saying much.

Boyhood (a movie review post)

I think it's probably safe to say that there has never been any other movie quite like this one. Ambitious is an understatement; risky comes closer to the truth. If you don't know the idea, Richard Linklater, the writer/director, took a group of actors, two of them kids, and followed them for 12 years (not constantly: that would be insane) in order to show the life of a boy from 5 to 18. Every year or so, he would gather the primary actors and whatever extras he needed and film a few scenes for the movie. That way, we saw the same boy (Ellar Coltrane) as Mason and watched him grow up through the process of making the movie rather than seeing a bunch of different actors playing the same kid.

I've given it several days, and I'm still ambivalent as to how I feel about the movie. The best thing I can say is that it's very interesting. It really is. But it's not captivating, so there's no place it couldn't have stopped where you would want to know what's going to happen next. I say that because the movie is also long, nearly three hours, and it felt it. I was ready for it to end well before it got to the end, if you can even call it that, because, really, it just stops. But more on that in a moment.

One of the risks involved with shooting a movie like this is that you end up with kids who can't act, and you certainly see some of this in the film. In fact, Linklater's daughter, Lorelei, plays Mason's older sister, and there are definitely scenes in which she is only capable of nervous laughter. She sort of falls out of the movie as the kids get older, and I have to wonder if part of that is not because she couldn't actually do the acting. Many of the scenes involving Mason as a pre-teen and teen are rather flat due to the lack of ability on the part of the other child actors involved. It's just reciting lines and rather awkward. Fortunately, some of it can be awkward because kids can be really awkward, so it doesn't completely fail.

Patricia Arquette is pretty decent as Mason's mom. She's believable, which I guess is what's important. However, she is also central to my major issue with the movie. Not her, the character. The actual story arc of the movie is hers; Mason just sort of dangles from it. Not to be spoilery (because, really, there's nothing to spoil in this movie even if I told you everything that happened), but the great emotional climax of the movie is her moment at the end when Mason is moving out to go to college and she declares that, with him leaving, all of the great moments of her life are over. All of them except death. You grow up, you get married, you have kids, you get divorced, you raise the kids, and, then, they leave. After that, only death awaits. Mason does not take the moment of his departure seriously enough for her. He does not understand its weight.

But Mason does leave and arrives at college to meet his roommate and the movie ends as they and a couple of girls skip out on freshman orientation. It's not that Mason doesn't change in the movie, because, of course, he grows up, but, really, it is just growing up. There is nothing extraordinary about his life other than the fact that he's the artsy kid from a liberal family growing up in south Texas. I get the feeling that the real purpose of the movie is that Linklater wants us to see how he grew up. That he was that liberal, artsy kid growing up in south Texas, because he did grow up in south Texas. It didn't feel eye-opening or revelatory to me. My wife says it's because I was that same kid (without the experimental earring) growing up in the South. However, I felt no connecting or empathy with the character.

Mason's mostly absent father is played by Ethan Hawke. Now, I am not a fan of Hawke. As far as I'm concerned, he should have stopped acting after Dead Poets Society. In effect, every role he's had since then has been based off of Todd Anderson. Not one time did Hawke give in to that signature deer-caught-in-headlights look in this movie. And he was really good. I mean, he was really good. Maybe, Hawke needs to be allowed to improvise more of his roles, because that's how I understand this movie to have been made: through improvisation. Basically, Linklater gave them a scene and told them to do it. No scripts. Whatever they did, it really worked for Hawke. He was easily the best part of the movie.

So this is one of those situations where most of what I have done is point out the weaknesses in the movie, but, despite those, or, maybe, because of  those, I did actually like the movie. As I said, it's interesting. I don't have a desire to see it again, but I am certainly glad I saw it this one time. However, it's not the kind of movie you need to see in the theater. It's not going to lose anything by waiting to see it on DVD.

I do think it gives a mostly accurate representation of what it's like to be a boy in American society, right now. Young Mason really has no ambitions. He wants to play video games, and he gets in trouble a lot for things that look like he's being destructive but are really just because he's curious, like trying to sharpen rocks in the pencil sharpener. His sister, on the other hand, is very driven, at one point expressing her disappointment in only having gotten an A on something rather than an A+. There is a wide divide between the girls and the boys in that way. Mason's mother has gone back to school (and eventually becomes a college professor) so that she can better their lives; his father has gone off to Alaska and spends his 20s chasing his dream of becoming a musician. Mason, by the time he's leaving for college, wants to be a photographer.

All of which brings me back to being ambivalent over the film. I think what Linklater has done here is pretty darn impressive despite the lack of a real story arc or message. Which is not to say that the movie doesn't say anything. I think it says a lot of things, but it doesn't really have an actual point or message to it other than, "Here it is. Here is boyhood." And maybe that's all it's supposed to be, after all. But, then, I did experience that for myself (minus the spray paint, the underage drinking, and the drugs), so it wasn't particularly enlightening for me. In that respect, maybe it's a film that women need to see. My wife certainly got more out of it than I did.