Stephen Frears. If you'd only shown me THE HIT and THE GRIFTERS, I'd have said he was one of the best crime directors around. If I'd only seen SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID and MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, I'd admit that he was a fine chronicler of Thatcher Britain, a Mike Leigh without pretensions, Ken Loach without the dullness. Add HIGH FIDELITY and PRICK UP YOUR EARS: none of these would have prepared me for THE HI-LO COUNTRY, an elegantly brutal Peckinpah-inspired Western elegy. I don't believe even then I'd have thought him capable of making DANGEROUS LIAISONS into my favorite costume romance: less precious than AMADEUS, immensely more human than BARRY LYNDON, far greater in impact and emotional scope than THE DUELISTS, and altogether more grown-up than any Golden Age tights-and-rapier entry it has been my pleasure to watch.
Truth be told, I'm not such a fan of Frears' most recent decade, but this man made some of the best movies produced between 1984 and 2000, in a breadth of idiom perhaps unique among present English-language directors. How many directors versed in urban comedy have ever succeeded at wig pieces? And Westerns? And gangster epics? And intimate relationship dramas? Hawks comes to mind, and Curtiz. Wyler. Wellman, maybe, and Ford, though I don't think they're much as comedians. Stevens, but his sandal pieces are a yawn. Powell and Pressburger never made a Western, though they could have, and Welles like Kubrick never got to, and Mankiewicz's sucked. And today? Who is there? Weir maybe, Boorman maybe, Forman maybe, and Hilcoat and Dominik show promise, but they're none of them funny. Ridley Scott? James Mangold? Please. You have to go back to the old studio system to find artists this versatile.
And that's just the director.
This is the movie that introduced filmgoers to the leading-man potential of the decidedly un-pretty eccentric John Malkovich, and to the surprising comic talent of a fashion model named Uma Thurman. It also features top turns from Mildred Natwick, Peter Capaldi, and Swoosie Kurtz. Michelle Pfeiffer has never been better, and Keanu Reeves may never have been good again. Glenn Close is terrifying in her power. But it's Malkovich who leaves the indelible impression: this idiosyncratic performance, in manner both modern and timeless, is more than entertaining. It is astonishing. It is a man naked, aided of course by a perfectly written character demanding a range of feeling and nuance. But the performer is the delivery system for three and four emotions at once, in some scenes offering a display so rare as to make me forget that I like other actors.
And that's just the cast.
Christopher Hampton's script (from his own play) retains much of the dialog and all of the wit of Choderlos de Laclos's original novel, without the ponderous moralizing. Hampton teaches not with a sermon but with banter. Very infrequently have I been so consistently charmed by language, though the words are only decoration to this world. We are enveloped by cruel pleasures, corrupt glamor, all the decadence we can eat and all the horror we can witness without dying of shock. There is real danger here, not just the nip-out-the-window bedroom farce variety but the peril of violent spiritual and physical destruction. It's an operatically tragic story that manages to inspire catharsis by exploring cynicism. How many of those have you seen lately?
And how gorgeous it is to see! The genius Philippe Rousselot has been responsible for some really unbelievable footage. L'OURS alone would place him in the pantheon of photographer gods; then remember HENRY AND JUNE and A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT and DIVA and THE GREAT DEBATERS (not great movies, though you can't blame how they look), and you have to wonder why he is not a household name. The least that one can say of his work on this piece is that it makes Miroslav Ondricek's on VALMONT look like British television. Rousselot illuminates the weave of every fabric in James Acheson's wonderful costumes, and records all the murky or sunny detail of Stuart Craig's sets, yet keeps enough distance to make Malkovich's missing-link face an almost heroic object. That's beyond talent into grace.
When Valmont instructs Cecile in "one or two Latin terms", the joke is funny; then Frears cuts to a priest offering a Latin benediction, and we feel the bond between flesh and spirit. A peacock calls periodically during Valmont's country seductions -- you can barely hear it, and you never see it, but there it is, that fragile, prideful bird quietly alerting you that what is happening is deeper than genre or style. This is art: that thing telling you what you might have known of life if only you'd been able to think with the mind of God.
All this plus a swordfight both dramatic and dramatically significant, illustrating theme, character and story. Top that, Ang Lee.
Truth be told, I'm not such a fan of Frears' most recent decade, but this man made some of the best movies produced between 1984 and 2000, in a breadth of idiom perhaps unique among present English-language directors. How many directors versed in urban comedy have ever succeeded at wig pieces? And Westerns? And gangster epics? And intimate relationship dramas? Hawks comes to mind, and Curtiz. Wyler. Wellman, maybe, and Ford, though I don't think they're much as comedians. Stevens, but his sandal pieces are a yawn. Powell and Pressburger never made a Western, though they could have, and Welles like Kubrick never got to, and Mankiewicz's sucked. And today? Who is there? Weir maybe, Boorman maybe, Forman maybe, and Hilcoat and Dominik show promise, but they're none of them funny. Ridley Scott? James Mangold? Please. You have to go back to the old studio system to find artists this versatile.
And that's just the director.
This is the movie that introduced filmgoers to the leading-man potential of the decidedly un-pretty eccentric John Malkovich, and to the surprising comic talent of a fashion model named Uma Thurman. It also features top turns from Mildred Natwick, Peter Capaldi, and Swoosie Kurtz. Michelle Pfeiffer has never been better, and Keanu Reeves may never have been good again. Glenn Close is terrifying in her power. But it's Malkovich who leaves the indelible impression: this idiosyncratic performance, in manner both modern and timeless, is more than entertaining. It is astonishing. It is a man naked, aided of course by a perfectly written character demanding a range of feeling and nuance. But the performer is the delivery system for three and four emotions at once, in some scenes offering a display so rare as to make me forget that I like other actors.
And that's just the cast.
Christopher Hampton's script (from his own play) retains much of the dialog and all of the wit of Choderlos de Laclos's original novel, without the ponderous moralizing. Hampton teaches not with a sermon but with banter. Very infrequently have I been so consistently charmed by language, though the words are only decoration to this world. We are enveloped by cruel pleasures, corrupt glamor, all the decadence we can eat and all the horror we can witness without dying of shock. There is real danger here, not just the nip-out-the-window bedroom farce variety but the peril of violent spiritual and physical destruction. It's an operatically tragic story that manages to inspire catharsis by exploring cynicism. How many of those have you seen lately?
And how gorgeous it is to see! The genius Philippe Rousselot has been responsible for some really unbelievable footage. L'OURS alone would place him in the pantheon of photographer gods; then remember HENRY AND JUNE and A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT and DIVA and THE GREAT DEBATERS (not great movies, though you can't blame how they look), and you have to wonder why he is not a household name. The least that one can say of his work on this piece is that it makes Miroslav Ondricek's on VALMONT look like British television. Rousselot illuminates the weave of every fabric in James Acheson's wonderful costumes, and records all the murky or sunny detail of Stuart Craig's sets, yet keeps enough distance to make Malkovich's missing-link face an almost heroic object. That's beyond talent into grace.
When Valmont instructs Cecile in "one or two Latin terms", the joke is funny; then Frears cuts to a priest offering a Latin benediction, and we feel the bond between flesh and spirit. A peacock calls periodically during Valmont's country seductions -- you can barely hear it, and you never see it, but there it is, that fragile, prideful bird quietly alerting you that what is happening is deeper than genre or style. This is art: that thing telling you what you might have known of life if only you'd been able to think with the mind of God.
All this plus a swordfight both dramatic and dramatically significant, illustrating theme, character and story. Top that, Ang Lee.