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Mar. 26th, 2007 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenThis weekend, while luxuriating in a nice jacuzzi bath at home, I finally caught The Departed. I'd seen the original Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs, and I'd been loath to warm up to the Scorsese remake if only because the original was so good, I didn't think a remake could do anything but foul up. I understand why the film had to be remade to make it in this country--if it ain't in English (or about Jesus if it's it damn forrin' speak), it doesn't sell. So I was reluctant.
I was then blown away. I never think things live up to hype, and I tend to come at things prepared to dislike them when they receive all this attention and praise and people keep telling me to see it. So The Departed was not only good, it was good enough to overcome all that had preceded it. Just superb filmmaking all around. The entire thing was lifted from the original--from plot to certain settings and shots--but it didn't feel like just a direct remake, to its credit.
What I really enjoyed was the difference in energies surrounding the two informers. In the original, the gangster infiltrating the police is a happy, care-free sort of guy. He's in like Flynn with the police and he doesn't worry near at all about being found out. His counterpart is much the same until his only police contact is murdered.
What The Departed changed was the security of either man and it did so for the better. Leonardo DiCaprio gets major kudos from me here because he looked incredibly stressed out for the entire movie. You didn't even need the scenes with the shrink where he asks, matter-of-fact and a bit tetchily, whether or not he can get drugs that will help--or, if they can't, if they can at least put him out of his misery. Much is said about his being really smart, but that's not even what helps him survive. The split-family upbringing is a genius touch because it sets up a sympathetic, believable sort of schizophrenia that allows Leo's character to do what he needs to in order to get his job done.
Then you have Matt Damon, the criminal in the police house. The loyalty he learned, and earnestly felt, at a young age lets him fit right in amongst the good-ol'-boys mentality of a police precinct (and boy oh boy, is it ever a boy's club). Matt Damon plays him just right, as the eager-to-please son who wants to believe that his murderous, imperfect father figure is at least honorable in their relationship. Sins of the father tear them apart as much as honest ambition and a desire to advance as was present in the original. Great addition.
The film itself is so tight as a narrative, there doesn't feel like any wasted gesture or line. Mark Wahlberg was phenomenal, and I can see why he got an Oscar nom. He wasn't the only one. I can honestly say I haven't enjoyed Alec Baldwin in a role as much as I did him in The Departed in years. Jack Nicholson is a fabulous actor, and I love that he managed to include that menace and exhuberance he does so well with a restrained, understated, even humorous overall performance that didn't veer into the dangerous, breaking-the-fourth-wall, Jack-as-Jack territory of so many of his later-in-life films. The best compliment to him is to say I forgot he was Jack Nicholson for a while. Scary, but true.
And, despite knowing exactly how the thing played out, the final showdown between Damon and DiCaprio completely surprised the shit out of me. There were two mobsters who'd infiltrated the police in the original, but until the dark horse came out of nowhere and killed Leo's character right as he was about to triumph, I completely forgot about that. A-fucking-mazing. That's how you know it wasn't written by an American or for an American audience originally--that should have been (would have been) the moment that the good guy takes down the bad guy, gets his life back, moves in with the hot girlfriend, writes a book, and retires famous. Instead, he doesn't even see a bullet going through his skull. Horrified--had chills, yo--when Leo just dropped and the elevator opened and closed on his body. This tour-de-force of a character, bravado and vulnerability in equal measure...poof, gone. My stomach dropped to my ankles. I almost had to stop the DVD because I just couldn't make my brain process--let alone accept--what had just happened, and I knew it was going to. Daaaaamn.
I was completely out of my skull when Mark Wahlberg showed up again at the end because that was not in the original. In the original, the gangster informing on the police finds out about the other guy who has also infiltrated the police, and he uses him, as Damon does, as the fall guy. Nice and neat: got the mole who got the heroic officer. True to it not being an American film, in a sense, the bad guy wins. The undercover officer gets a hero's funeral, but he's still dead and the mole stays on as a hero cop. It's not fixing what a shitty, awful, stupid waste it is that the undercover cop got killed to have Damon killed, too, but there's definitely a sense of he fucking deserves it and Damon even played it right. I don't think he was trying to feign acceptance in hope that Wahlberg's character wouldn't shoot--I think he meant it when he looked at the guy and the gun and sighed "Okay."
That's just a bunch of raving to say that I actually respect Leo DiCaprio for this, like whoa. I suppose I need to see Blood Diamond now. Because if the Academy decided that he didn't deserve at least a nomination for best actor for The Departed, then his role in Blood Diamond must have been fucking spectacular. Of course, by that logic, I also need to see The Last King of Scotland to find out why Forest Whitaker actually won the Oscar...
I also watched a strange little independent movie I got from Netflix called Zerophilia. The ridiculous premise is that some people have a Z chromosome that, once activated, will cause them to change genders whenever they have an orgasm. It's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by another name (SCIENCE!) basically. The lead kid, who suffers from this condition, is told by a doctor that he has up to a certain time before which he will have to decide which gender he truly wants to be and then he'll be fixed in one gender. This would happen right as he's getting close to the (female) object of his desire, too, naturally.
The movie was cute, but the problems of tone left it as cute and not at all profound or disturbing, which it tried to be at points. The affected kid's best guy friend wigs out about this, and the usual protestations about "he's straight" fall away into being "I accept him for who s/he is no matter what" kind of predictably. It's his best friend's girlfriend and her position that sort of muddle the idea of this 'condition' as a metaphor for sexual self-enlightenment and experimentation. Her entire role is shallow. She basically upbraids her boyfriend who is determined to fix his friend as a guy with the cunning argument, "What's wrong with being a girl?" Boyfriend is so clueless he just never answers her, not even with very convincing "Nothing's wrong with girls, I like girls!" or stuff of that nature.
So it was cute, but the material, even with the bad sci-fi'y premise could have been so much more. It could have had more reflection on what it means to a guy who's always been straight-leaning to suddenly be a girl...who is also straight leaning for a girl and whether the immediate denial of such a thing as attraction for your own gender is automatic or a consequence of your environment--i.e., does hetero- or homosexuality trump gender (meaning you stay one or the other whether you're girl or boy, and if you change genders, your gender-of-choice in a mate changes too), or does gender determine hetero- or homosexual inclination? Can you only really be free to express homosexual urges in a body that wouldn't make sex with the homosexual object of desire technically homosexual sex? There is a zerophiliac who's gay in this and became one gender so s/he wouldn't be gay when having sex with men (again, the question of why s/he had to do that) but got no pleasure out of it when s/he did. In a stronger filmmaker's hands, this would have been less romantic comedy and more a comedic, romantic drama.
I was then blown away. I never think things live up to hype, and I tend to come at things prepared to dislike them when they receive all this attention and praise and people keep telling me to see it. So The Departed was not only good, it was good enough to overcome all that had preceded it. Just superb filmmaking all around. The entire thing was lifted from the original--from plot to certain settings and shots--but it didn't feel like just a direct remake, to its credit.
What I really enjoyed was the difference in energies surrounding the two informers. In the original, the gangster infiltrating the police is a happy, care-free sort of guy. He's in like Flynn with the police and he doesn't worry near at all about being found out. His counterpart is much the same until his only police contact is murdered.
What The Departed changed was the security of either man and it did so for the better. Leonardo DiCaprio gets major kudos from me here because he looked incredibly stressed out for the entire movie. You didn't even need the scenes with the shrink where he asks, matter-of-fact and a bit tetchily, whether or not he can get drugs that will help--or, if they can't, if they can at least put him out of his misery. Much is said about his being really smart, but that's not even what helps him survive. The split-family upbringing is a genius touch because it sets up a sympathetic, believable sort of schizophrenia that allows Leo's character to do what he needs to in order to get his job done.
Then you have Matt Damon, the criminal in the police house. The loyalty he learned, and earnestly felt, at a young age lets him fit right in amongst the good-ol'-boys mentality of a police precinct (and boy oh boy, is it ever a boy's club). Matt Damon plays him just right, as the eager-to-please son who wants to believe that his murderous, imperfect father figure is at least honorable in their relationship. Sins of the father tear them apart as much as honest ambition and a desire to advance as was present in the original. Great addition.
The film itself is so tight as a narrative, there doesn't feel like any wasted gesture or line. Mark Wahlberg was phenomenal, and I can see why he got an Oscar nom. He wasn't the only one. I can honestly say I haven't enjoyed Alec Baldwin in a role as much as I did him in The Departed in years. Jack Nicholson is a fabulous actor, and I love that he managed to include that menace and exhuberance he does so well with a restrained, understated, even humorous overall performance that didn't veer into the dangerous, breaking-the-fourth-wall, Jack-as-Jack territory of so many of his later-in-life films. The best compliment to him is to say I forgot he was Jack Nicholson for a while. Scary, but true.
And, despite knowing exactly how the thing played out, the final showdown between Damon and DiCaprio completely surprised the shit out of me. There were two mobsters who'd infiltrated the police in the original, but until the dark horse came out of nowhere and killed Leo's character right as he was about to triumph, I completely forgot about that. A-fucking-mazing. That's how you know it wasn't written by an American or for an American audience originally--that should have been (would have been) the moment that the good guy takes down the bad guy, gets his life back, moves in with the hot girlfriend, writes a book, and retires famous. Instead, he doesn't even see a bullet going through his skull. Horrified--had chills, yo--when Leo just dropped and the elevator opened and closed on his body. This tour-de-force of a character, bravado and vulnerability in equal measure...poof, gone. My stomach dropped to my ankles. I almost had to stop the DVD because I just couldn't make my brain process--let alone accept--what had just happened, and I knew it was going to. Daaaaamn.
I was completely out of my skull when Mark Wahlberg showed up again at the end because that was not in the original. In the original, the gangster informing on the police finds out about the other guy who has also infiltrated the police, and he uses him, as Damon does, as the fall guy. Nice and neat: got the mole who got the heroic officer. True to it not being an American film, in a sense, the bad guy wins. The undercover officer gets a hero's funeral, but he's still dead and the mole stays on as a hero cop. It's not fixing what a shitty, awful, stupid waste it is that the undercover cop got killed to have Damon killed, too, but there's definitely a sense of he fucking deserves it and Damon even played it right. I don't think he was trying to feign acceptance in hope that Wahlberg's character wouldn't shoot--I think he meant it when he looked at the guy and the gun and sighed "Okay."
That's just a bunch of raving to say that I actually respect Leo DiCaprio for this, like whoa. I suppose I need to see Blood Diamond now. Because if the Academy decided that he didn't deserve at least a nomination for best actor for The Departed, then his role in Blood Diamond must have been fucking spectacular. Of course, by that logic, I also need to see The Last King of Scotland to find out why Forest Whitaker actually won the Oscar...
I also watched a strange little independent movie I got from Netflix called Zerophilia. The ridiculous premise is that some people have a Z chromosome that, once activated, will cause them to change genders whenever they have an orgasm. It's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by another name (SCIENCE!) basically. The lead kid, who suffers from this condition, is told by a doctor that he has up to a certain time before which he will have to decide which gender he truly wants to be and then he'll be fixed in one gender. This would happen right as he's getting close to the (female) object of his desire, too, naturally.
The movie was cute, but the problems of tone left it as cute and not at all profound or disturbing, which it tried to be at points. The affected kid's best guy friend wigs out about this, and the usual protestations about "he's straight" fall away into being "I accept him for who s/he is no matter what" kind of predictably. It's his best friend's girlfriend and her position that sort of muddle the idea of this 'condition' as a metaphor for sexual self-enlightenment and experimentation. Her entire role is shallow. She basically upbraids her boyfriend who is determined to fix his friend as a guy with the cunning argument, "What's wrong with being a girl?" Boyfriend is so clueless he just never answers her, not even with very convincing "Nothing's wrong with girls, I like girls!" or stuff of that nature.
So it was cute, but the material, even with the bad sci-fi'y premise could have been so much more. It could have had more reflection on what it means to a guy who's always been straight-leaning to suddenly be a girl...who is also straight leaning for a girl and whether the immediate denial of such a thing as attraction for your own gender is automatic or a consequence of your environment--i.e., does hetero- or homosexuality trump gender (meaning you stay one or the other whether you're girl or boy, and if you change genders, your gender-of-choice in a mate changes too), or does gender determine hetero- or homosexual inclination? Can you only really be free to express homosexual urges in a body that wouldn't make sex with the homosexual object of desire technically homosexual sex? There is a zerophiliac who's gay in this and became one gender so s/he wouldn't be gay when having sex with men (again, the question of why s/he had to do that) but got no pleasure out of it when s/he did. In a stronger filmmaker's hands, this would have been less romantic comedy and more a comedic, romantic drama.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 09:13 pm (UTC)I had lots of thoughts about it after I saw it . . . (http://linaerys.livejournal.com/464001.html#cutid2)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 09:20 pm (UTC)::goes to read::
no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 09:53 pm (UTC)I need to watch the original again, because I was tired and nearly dozed off. Mostly I remembered being dazzled by the visual design of the movie, such as the parking garage where the crime boss meets his end.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 06:46 am (UTC)Now that I know you went and rented Infernal Affairs, it makes me want to remind you more about Oldboy. Also, like four months ago you said Brick was near the top of your Netflix thing. What happened with that?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 02:31 pm (UTC)Also, like four months ago you said Brick was near the top of your Netflix thing
You and that movie...really, I think I should just leave you two alone together or something. I thought I'd commented on it, too. Well, I saw it, and I don't think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread like you seem to. It was enjoyable for the phrasing and dialogue, but otherwise it was merely okay. I mean, it was what it was, a cheesy, cliched noir, and the acting (save Gordon-Levitt, he was pretty good) was so-so. Other than the dialogue, it wasn't super special.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 09:44 pm (UTC)^.~
I think the premise of Brick was okay, and, like I said, the dialogue was way fun. I'm not surprised the transplant of the noir to high school worked so well. Where else do people live in daily melodramas of who's with who, who's shunning who, and who knows what about whom? It's like what I was saying about the updating of Othello (http://trinityvixen.livejournal.com/356758.html#cutid2)--successful updates cover the weaknesses of story, the turn-off potential for the audience by using setting as a silent character to fill in the rest. With Brick, a lot of the conventions of the noir were rendered a tad less ridiculous because opportunity to meet random folk who are as good as strangers and can change your life forever is a little more common in a large institution like a high school.
The plot, meh. The femme fatale, double-meh. The hero, suitably melancholic and tough.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 01:10 pm (UTC)A stronger filmmaker would have used dread nercomancy to bring Isaac Asimov back from the dead to write the script. _That_ would have made an impressive film.
Still, I'm vaguely interested in Zerophilia now.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 04:04 am (UTC)The doctor lady seemed familiar, but I don't think I've seen her in anything. Her boy form was way cute, though.