Infamous

...

Rating 3


Written and directed by Douglas McGrath, based on the book by George Plimpton

Starring Toby Jones (Truman Capote), Sandra Bullock (Harper Lee), Daniel Craig (Perry Smith), Lee Pace (Richard Hickock), Sigourney Weaver (Babe Paley), Jeff Daniels (Alvin Dewey), Gwyneth Paltrow (Kitty Dean), Isabella Rossellini (Marella Agnelli), Juliet Stevenson (Diana Vreeland), Michael Panes (Gore Vidal), Hope Davis (Slim Keith), Frank Curcio (William Shawn), John Benjamin Hickey (Jack Dunphy), Bethlyn Gerard (Marie Dewey) and Peter Bogdanovich (Bennett Cerf)


When, in November 1959, the celebrated New York author and wit Truman Capote reads an small report in the New York Times about the murder of a family in Holcomb, Kansas he decides to write an article about the crime and its impact on the local community, travelling to Holcomb with his lifelong friend and confidant, the author Harper “Nellie” Lee. He soon realises he has enough material to write a book, adopting a new approach that he describes as a “non-fiction novel”. As his research and writing continues, he becomes increasingly wrapped up in the life of Perry Smith, one of the two men responsible for the killings.

...


‘Infamous’ is based on a 1997 book by the late George Plimpton and deals with the events leading up to the writing of Truman Capote’s book ‘In Cold Blood’, which caused a sensation when it was first published in serial form in the New Yorker magazine in 1965, six years after the killings. The film received a limited theatrical release in October 2006 and dealt with exactly the same subject as ‘Capote’, which had been released in September 2005. That earlier film received much greater attention, including the Academy Award for Best Actor for the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role.

Both films deal with Capote’s motivation for writing the book, which he researched in considerable detail, interviewing many of the people connected with the case, including the two convicted killers, and eventually amassing more than 8,000 pages of notes. He did not tape record any of the interviews he conducted, instead transcribing them from memory, and it has been claimed that he deliberately changed some of the detail to suit his own purposes in creating this new style of non-fiction work. He was particularly fascinated by Perry Smith and it has long been rumoured that the two shared a romantic or even sexual relationship during Capote’s visits to the prison where Smith was held, although there is no real evidence to support this.

I had initially avoided watching ‘Infamous’, having already seen the excellent ‘Capote’ and deciding that I did not need to watch two films that dealt with the same subject matter in such a short space of time. However, a friend recommended it to me, making mention of the performance of Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee, whose acclaimed novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was published in July 1960. Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel in 1961. I like Sandra Bullock very much and believe she is a much better actress than many of her film choices and has genuine screen presence. Her performance here is quietly impressive and is, for me, the highlight of the film, although the central focus is on Toby Jones as Truman Capote and Daniel Craig as Perry Smith and the relationship of these two pivotal characters. Harper Lee, who has never published another novel after ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, said in 2007, when asked to address an audience at a ceremony she attended, “It’s better to be silent than to be a fool.”

‘Infamous’ makes a distinction between the small community of Holcomb and the impact it (and Perry Smith) has on Truman Capote and his celebrity lifestyle in New York and the society circles he moves in. We see him with the socialite and style icon Babe Paley, of which he once wrote, “Babe Paley had only one fault, she was perfect. Otherwise, she was perfect.” Paley was one of Capote’s “swans”, as were Marella Agnelli and Slim Keith, both of whom feature in the film. Paley and Keith were the inspiration for Capote’s posthumous novel ‘Answered Prayers’, which when some work-in-progress chapters were published in Esquire magazine in 1975 and 1976, resulted in Capote being ostracised by several friends led by Paley.

The scenes set in New York are somewhat stylised, but I imagine this is deliberate to create a juxtaposition with the reality of Holcomb and the real lives of real people that Capote encounters there. His friends in New York seem like caricatures, but that is what they are, jet set socialites and style icons playing a role. I don’t think the film quite manages to make this mix work entirely successfully, but I can see what it set out to do.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays a nightclub singer called Kitty Dean. The original intention had been that she would portray the singer Peggy Lee and the scene in the film when she goes into a kind of trance during her performance of a song to a nightclub audience, including Capote, is based on a genuine performance by the nightclub singer and Broadway musical actress Barbara Cook.

The film boosts a very impressive cast and there are some very good performances. Toby Jones, in particular, manages to avoid turning Capote into a caricature, even though that is what he was in many ways, and perhaps even more so than Philip Seymour Hoffman the previous year, he creates a real person who found himself identifying with Perry Smith. Capote’s childhood was a long way removed from the circles he moved in later on after his successful writing career was established and both films reference this as a motivator for the strange attraction of the contemplative but explosively violent Smith.

‘Infamous’ has a 71% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 135 reviews. It had a production budget estimated to have been in the region of $13 million and grossed $2.6 million at the box office worldwide.

Review posted 11 June 2009



...

The Golden Compass

…

Rating 2½


Written and directed by Chris Weitz, based on the novel ‘Northern Lights’ by Philip Pullman

Starring Dakota Blue Richards, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Sam Elliott, Derek Jacobi, Tom Courtenay, Jim Carter, Eva Green, Clare Higgins, Christopher Lee, Simon McBurney, Jack Shepherd and Ben Walker : Voices by Ian McKellen, Freddie Highmore, Ian McShane, Kristin Scott Thomas and Kathy Bates


In an alternate universe, parallel to our own, the souls of people walk alongside them in the form of various animals and birds. These are called daemons.

Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) is the orphaned niece of Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) and is being cared for and receiving education at his alma mater Jordan College. Asriel discovers evidence of “dust”, the substance that binds together the infinite number of parallel universes, and secures funds from the college to travel to the far north to investigate further. This goes against the wishes of the Magisterium, the ruling authority that wishes to keep all evidence and knowledge of dust a secret.

In Asriel’s absence, Lyra becomes the “assistant” to the mysterious Mrs Coulter (Nicole Kidman), who says she plans to mount her own expedition into the far north. Before she leaves the college, Lyra is secretly entrusted with the last surviving alethiometer, a golden compass that, when used and interpreted correctly, can provide truth and answers to questions.

Lyra discovers that Mrs Coulter has something to do with the Gobblers, who kidnap children, and escapes, eventually finding refuge with the Gyptian, seafaring people led by John Faa (Jim Carter). From here she meets Serafina Pekkala (Eva Green), the witch queen, as well as the aeronaut Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott) and lorek Byrnison (voiced by Ian McKellen), an armour-clad warrior polar bear. Scoresby and Byrnison are recruited to her aid as she continues her journey to find her uncle.

I have never read ‘His Dark Materials’, the trilogy of fantasy books written by the English novelist Philip Pullman that begins with ‘Northern Lights’ (retitled ‘The Golden Compass’ in the US), but the film feels like a very sketchy and inadequate interpretation of the novel. It has a running time in excess of 110 minutes (admittedly, about ten minutes of this is given over to the ludicrously long list of visual effects credits at the end), but it always feels rushed and paper-thin, rather as if it is a basic outline of the screenplay rather than the finished product. The ending, in particular, is a damp squib, although this is perhaps not the fault of the film since it is only one part of a much bigger story.

I recall that British film critics were very taken with the twelve-year-old Dakota Blue Richards, making her film debut here, even if later on the Daily Telegraph published a news story describing her as a “yob” because she was allegedly one of a group of teenage girls responsible for destroying a snowman in Hove in East Sussex.

I felt that Richards’ accent sometimes slipped into “Cor blimey, ‘enry ‘iggins!” territory, but she was very engaging and clearly has screen presence. The largely British cast is excellent and Nicole Kidman adds some star quality to the proceedings. She apparently turned down the role initially, before she was persuaded to take it on in a personal letter from Philip Pullman. In a real coup for the film, the theme song is written and sung by the mercurial Kate Bush.

With a production budget of $180 million, the copious CGI effects would be expected to be state-of-the-art. They are that and they are undoubtedly impressive, but they never look like anything other than special effects. For all the money spent and the technical expertise utilised, they somehow never look real.

The film grossed a little over $70 million in the US, a very poor showing given the monumental budget. It grossed a much more satisfactory $302 million in the rest of the world. However, I suspect the comparatively low American gross must place a question mark over plans to film ‘The Subtle Knife’ and ‘The Amber Spyglass’, the other novels in the trilogy.

Based primarily on John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ and first published between 1995 and 2000, the novels have become best sellers and have also created a degree of controversy regarding the religious imagery and perceived criticism of organised Christian religions. The film version of ‘The Golden Compass’ dilutes this, the Magisterium no longer portrayed as a representation of the Catholic Church, largely in an attempt to make it palatable to American religious sensibilities, but it was still criticised, both by religious and secular groups.



…

The Invasion

…

Rating 2


Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

Written by David Kajganich from the novel by Jack Finney

Starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jackson Bond, Jeffrey Wright and Veronica Cartwright


When a NASA space shuttle explodes on re-entry and debris from it crashes back to Earth over a wide area it releases an intergalactic spore that invades its human hosts, taking over their bodies while they sleep and turning them into “pod people”. Tucker Bennell (Jeremy Northam), a senior investigator working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of those infected. His estranged wife Carol (Nicole Kidman), a successful psychiatrist, begins to have suspicions, which she shares with her best friend, Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig), a hospital-based doctor.

The first thirty minutes or so set the scene with a reasonable degree of attention to detail, passably introducing the creepy aura of a major city, Washington D.C., fast taken over by the hordes of emotion-free pod people. Once the basic facts are established, however, it turns into a frenetic and ham-fisted race against time, as Carol tries to escape from the locked-down capital and make her way to Baltimore to rescue her young son Oliver (Jackson Bond) from her husband.

Strange fractured editing has been employed to tell the story, jumping back and forth within very small timeframes. It is not confusing to the development of the story, but it does give the impression of a film that has been rather clumsily put together. After the relatively encouraging first half-an-hour it rapidly unravels and spirals downhill.

When ‘The Invasion’ was released into American cinemas in August 2007 it was greeted with scathing reviews and subsequently had a miserable showing at the box office. It would eventually gross $15 million in America against an alleged $80 million production budget, with a further box office gross of $26 million overseas. The blame for the failure of the film was placed squarely at the door of Nicole Kidman, who, in time-honoured cinematic tradition has now been accused of being “box office poison”, despite her being one of Hollywood’s few genuine international film stars.

Having watched the film, it is clear to me that any responsibility for its failings is the result of studio interference. Executives at Warner Brothers were not happy with the film made by director Oliver Hirschbiegel. They brought in the Wachowski brothers (‘The Matrix’) to re-write the script and after a break of thirteen months they hired James McTiegue (‘V for Vendetta’) to direct the additional scenes, during which Kidman broke several ribs and was hospitalised when a stunt went wrong.

‘The Invasion’, which was variously known as ‘The Visiting’ and ‘Invasion’ during production, is yet another adaptation of Jack Finney’s 1955 novel ‘The Body Snatchers’. It was originally adapted for the big screen in 1956 and re-titled ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, a classic film of its genre directed by Don Siegel, who would later make ‘Dirty Harry’. A 1978 remake by director Philip Kaufman (‘The Right Stuff’) was a critical and box office success and it was re-made again in 1993, the title now shortened to ‘Body Snatchers’. This third version was directed by Abel Ferrara, who had previously been responsible for controversial films like ‘Driller Killer’ and ‘King of New York’.

The influence of Jack Finney’s novel has extended elsewhere, for example the excellent 1998 Robert Rodriguez high school horror ‘The Faculty’ and the sadly short-lived 2005 ABC network television series ‘Invasion’. The theme itself dates back even further than Finney’s novel and can also be found in ‘The Puppet Masters’, a 1951 novel by Robert A Heinlein, and in the 1953 film ‘It Came From Outer Space’, based on a Ray Bradbury short story.

The original 1956 film has variously been claimed to be an allegory for the perceived threat of Communism or a comment about the paranoia in McCarthy-era America, both themes being inter-related. The 1978 film drew on the continuing fallout from the Vietnam War and Watergate. The 1993 film was a commentary about the rigid restrictions that society places upon itself. This fourth film takes place in a post 9/11 climate of international conflict caused by racial, religious and political intolerance.

‘The Invasion’ is a weak and unnecessary version of a story that has been successfully adapted for the screen several times. However, the sexist and maybe even misogynist finger-pointing in the direction of Nicole Kidman, and unproven claims that her alleged heavy use of Botox had already turned her into an emotionless pod person before the film even went into production, is entirely unjustified. Her substantial body of work has surely already established her acting and box office credentials, and she is certainly the best thing about this mediocre film.

Veronica Cartwright, who has a small role here, had a leading role in the 1978 film and also made a three-episode guest appearance in the ABC television series.



…