Category: Arts

Everyone remembers Psycho, in which Anthony Perkins played a knife-wielding weirdo obsessed with his dead mother, and most of us remember Rambo, in which Sylvester Stallone played a super-patriot action-hero fighting for truth, justice and the American way. We all know about Romeo, and some of us will remember Dumbo, Disney’s animated baby elephant with the big ears. But Trumbo? He’s not exactly a household name, and unless you’re something of a film buff you may never have heard of him. Trumbo is the hero of Trumbo, a wholly absorbing film from Hollywood director Jay Roach.

For the record, Dalton Trumbo was a successful screenwriter during Hollywood’s golden years, one of the notorious ”Hollywood Ten” blacklisted in the 1940s for refusing to testify before Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. The committee was set up to weed out communists in high places, and the definition of “communist” was fairly loose. These were the dark days of anti-red witch-hunts, when many a loyal American was named and shamed for real or imagined communist sympathies. The Hollywood Ten finished up in gaol, and many other writers, actors and directors were sacked or boycotted by the major studios. Some eked out an income by writing under assumed names, but their work was never credited on-screen. In Roach’s film the screenplay – crisp, witty and disturbing – is the work of John McNamara, and I doubt if Trumbo himself could have written a better one

It’s true that many Hollywood celebrities had communist connections . As an opening title informs us, thousands of Americans joined the party during the war years when Uncle Joe Stalin was a loyal ally of Uncle Sam. Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) joined up in 1943, and in the eyes of McCarthy and his witch-hunting mates, was a still a certified security risk years after the war was over. It was much the same here. Thousands of lefties and Laborites, haunted by bitter memories of war and depression, drifted into the communist camp. My own father was one, causing much anguish to poor mum, who was convinced that dad’s CP membership had denied him an army commission.

Roach’s film is as much a portrait of those paranoid times as a study of Trumbo himself. Cranston, familiar to all except me as the star of the TV series Breaking Bad, gives us a grimly dogged and highly convincing impersonation. But for all his studied mannerisms and surface gestures, we never engage deeply with Trumbo as a human being. If anything, Diane Lane as his loyal wife Cleo, and Elle Fanning as his teenage daughter, are more vivid and sympathetic characters. Roach falls back on repeated shots of Trumbo belting away at an old manual typewriter or writing in his bathtub, sustained by cigarettes, whisky and Benzedrine hits, as if this were enough to reveal his inner life. I wanted to care more for the guy. Neighbours shunned and vilified him, and the syndicated columnist Hedda Hopper (a gleefully malicious Helen Mirren) pursued a relentless personal vendetta . Hopper comes across as the real villain of the story – not McCarthy or the feeble studio bosses or the big-name stars like John Wayne who spurned Trumbo in his hour of need .

How good was Trumbo anyway? He made a tidy fortune as a screenwriter, but apart from Kitty Foyle, about a working-class girl who makes good, and the Oscar-winning romance Roman Holiday, there’s not a lot else of Trumbo’s I remember. Roman Holiday was written by Trumbo’s friend Ian McKellan Hunter, who based his script on Trumbo’s storyline and declined to turn up at the presentation ceremony to accept his Oscar (which officially went to Trumbo in 1975). A turning point came when Stanley Kubrick defied Hollywood moguls by insisting that Trumbo be credited for the screenplay of Spartacus (1960). Spartacus isn’t Kubrick’s best film, but it sealed the fate of the Hollywood blacklist and signalled the end of the McCarthy era.

Could it happen again? I think so. There’s no shortage of political hysteria in the air these days, and plenty of reckless military adventurism of the kind that feeds hatred and suspicion. I can imagine a round of Islamist witch-hunts in the US, especially if Donald Trumbo (sorry, Trump) becomes president: “For our own security I want to weed out all those Islamists in the State Department and the White House.” There’s a telling moment in Trumbo when news comes through of the death of justice Wiley Rutledge, wiping out a narrow liberal majority on the US Supreme Court and denying Trumbo any chance of a successful appeal against his gaol sentence. With the recent death of justice Antonin Scalia, Barack Obama has a choice. He can cement a conservative majority on the court or make it a little easier for liberal causes to succeed. Future Trumbos will await his decision with interest.

Three-and-a-half stars

Evan Williams reviewed films in The Australian newspaper for 33 years. He is a Life Member of the Film Critics’ Circle of Australia for services to film criticism and the film industry.In 2015 he received the Geraldine Pascall Lifetime Achievement Award for critical writing.

An opening title informs us that The Big Short is “based on a true story.” That usually means that the film we are about to see has only a tenuous connection with reality, that most of it is invented and the events depicted may not have happened at all. Is anyone suggesting that the Global Financial Crisis, the subject of this scarifying comedy from director Andy McKay, may not have happened, that the millions who lost their jobs, their homes or their businesses, or saw their families shattered by the crisis were victims of some strange delusion? Well, of course not. McKay’s film is a viciously funny and horrifically convincing account of how the GFC came into being, driven by the base instincts of crooked bankers and cynical financial go-getters.

It’s based on a best-selling book by Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, described by Reuters newsagency as “probably the best single piece of financial journalism ever written.” McKay’s film, already a winner of many awards and a nominee for best picture Oscar, I rank as the best single film on the subject – though there haven’t been many. The last big one was J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call, set in the (well-disguised) offices of the New York investment banker Lehman Brothers, whose collapse in 2008 triggered the global crisis. In one of the more poignant moments in The Big Short, McKay gives us a desolate recreation of Lehman Brothers’ abandoned offices, a wasteland of scattered paper, idle computer screens and overturned chairs.

So it’s funny, it’s sad and it’s scary. I remember when it first occurred to me that stock exchanges were little more than glorified casinos. But compared with those dignified bastions of financial sobriety, with their long-established rules and venerable traditions, the Wall Street financial scene (at least in the years from 2005 to 2008) was closer to a certified mad-house. And as befits a film about an outbreak of collective insanity, McKay’s film is pretty mad itself – a bundle of cinematic tricks with scarcely a moment for reflection or calm analysis. We get it all – jump cuts, freeze frames, little touches of animation, odd mixes of colour and black and white, hand-held camera stuff, and characters speaking direct to the audience as if to vouchsafe some deeper truth. But it’s never overdone, and somehow, miraculously, it works.

McKay has assembled a top-flight Hollywood cast and given them their heads, with the result that there is much shouting and ranting and a generous scattering of four-letter words from actors of both sexes. Among the standouts are Michael Burry (Christian Bale) a retired neurologist and former Deutche Bank guru who is the first to recognise mysterious trends in the US housing market; Mark Baum (Steve Carell), a hedge-fund manager with a troubled conscience; and a barely recognisable Brad Pitt as Ben Rickert, a retired banker and one of the film’s token good guys. The cast also includes plenty of “himselfs” and “herselfs”, though I don’t think I’d heard of any of them. Margot Robbie is a real-life glamour-puss who appears in a bubble bath quaffing champagne while explaining the intricacies of the sub-prime housing market.

It’s not important – thank goodness – that we follow what’s going on or understand what anyone is talking about. The gobbledegook of the high-end finance industry has an inscrutable charm of its own – credit default swaps, mortgage-backed securities, “ninjo” loans (mortgages issued to people with no job and no income), bespoke opportunity tranches, and my favourite, collateralised debt obligations (CDOs). There’s even something called a synthetic CDO, which I leave to your imagination. But we get the picture: when these guys talk about “shorting the AA-rated tranches of CDOs” we know they’re up to no good. Something has to give, and eventually, tragically, it does. We laugh and seethe with anger at the same time.

It’s a compelling film – even when we have no idea what actually going on. I had the much same feeling reading Paddy Manning’s book Born to Rule, his excellent account of Malcolm Turnbull’s rise to power and prominence in the worlds of finance and politics. Of course, no one would dream of comparing our esteemed PM with the wicked wolves of Wall Street, but both in their time pursued similar intricate paths of financial wheeling and dealing, and I had little idea of what Turnbull was up to.

In The Big Short McKay seems to be hinting at something deeper than mere financial skulduggery: his glancing references to cocaine addiction, strip joints, idiotic pop music, drug cheating in sport, and other contemporary foibles suggest that The Big Short is both a critique of market capitalism’s worst excesses and something closer to cultural decadence. Only one banker was charged in the wake of the GFC and nothing whatever was done by governments to tighten regulation in the finance industry. Yes, it could happen again. I read somewhere that Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist candidate for the US presidency, has commended The Big Short as “excellent.” He would say that, wouldn’t he? But what does Malcolm think? Or Bill Shorten? I urge them to see it.

The Big Short (M) is in national release in selected cinemas. Four and a half stars.

Evan Williams has reviewed films in The Australian newspaper for 33 years. He is a Life Member of the Film Critics’ Circle of Australia for services to film criticism and the film industry.In 2015 he received the Geraldine Pascal Lifetime Achievement Award for critical writing.

I’m not alone in rating her the best actress in the world. Or as some would prefer to say, the best female actor in the world. Or more precisely, the best female English-speaking screen actor working in mainstream cinema. And yes, I’m talking about our Cate – up there with Garbo, Hepburn, Streep, destined for legendhood (if I may use that word) – and currently starring in Carol, an absorbing romantic drama directed by Todd Haynes.

She’s in her usual impeccable form. A critic once said that Cate Blanchett has “the kind of beauty – svelte, ravaged, angular, irresistible on screen – that combines sternness with vulnerability … acutely sensitive, finely nuanced, every twitch and head toss perfectly judged.” Who wrote that? Well, I did, actually – reviewing Rowan Woods’ 2005 film Little Fish, in which Blanchett starred with Hugo Weaving. Her performance was the best thing in the film. Indeed, every one of her films seems to demonstrate some new aspect of her power and versatility. A couple of years after Little Fish, in which she played a reformed junkie in Sydney’s western suburbs, she turned up with a cultivated English accent to reprise her role as the first Queen Elizabeth and won an Oscar. And she’s won a string of Oscars, Globes and similar baubles since.

But to say that she’s best thing going in Carol may be a little unfair to Rooney Mara, who plays Therese, Carol’s lesbian lover. Mara won an Oscar nomination for her performance, with Blanchett conspicuously passed over, probably on the grounds that she’d won more than her fair share already. And speaking of fairness, why is the film called Carol and not Carol and Therese? The characters have equal weight, the performances are comparably fine. It’s as if Thelma & Louise, Hollywood’s last great all-girl romantic escapade, had been called Thelma, or if someone had made a film of Romeo and Juliet and called it Romeo. I could go on, but it’s time to get serious.

Haynes’s beautiful and sombre film is drawn from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt, from which Phyllis Nagy has adapted the screenplay. By all accounts, Highsmith based the character of Therese Belivet on herself, after an affair she had with a woman in 1948 while working at Bloomingdale’s department store in New York. Carol is set in New York in 1952 (Eisenhower has just been elected) and, as in all the best period adaptations, no relevant background detail is forgotten or out of place. Gleaming Packards cruise the streets, gas stoves are lit with matches.Haynes’s last film, the excellent Far From Heaven, was another story of illicit love set in the 1950s, in which a middle-class suburban housewife has an affair with her African-American gardener. Carol is the better film, and the more daring. Lesbian love is still a no-no for the big studios, and I think I’m right in saying that this is Blanchett’s first venture into full-on sexual passion. Certain male admirers may also be interested to note that it’s the first film in which she gets her gear off, though unlike her great contemporary, Nicole Kidman, in Eyes Wide Shut,s he doesn’t give us the full Monty.(Sorry about that.)

Carol has been through a difficult divorce from her thoroughly unlikeable husband (Kyle Chandler), and Therese, an aspiring photographer, is coping with a devoted boyfriend (Jake Lacy), whom she doesn’t much care for. The women meet by chance in the toy department of a store called Frankenberg’s (real name?), and are reunited when Therese discovers a pair of Carol’s gloves left (accidentally?) on the counter and mails them back to her. The progress of their doomed affair is chartered with a depth and sensitivity wholly in character with the social constraints and polite inhibitions of the time – routine courtesies become sympathetic gestures, then something more serious, the lightest touch of a hand on another’s shoulder conveying a lingering erotic charge.

At just under two hours it’s a bit too long, considering that little actually happens and what does happen is largely predictable. There’s a violent twist about three-quarters of the way through which seems oddly jarring at the time but delivers some much-needed dramatic impetus. In its miserable way Carol is a wonderful and truthful work, superbly shot in the best Fifities tradition on 16mm stock by Edward Lachman. The ambience of the time is charmingly recaptured, though someone should have told Todd Haynes that respectable gentlemen never wore beards in those days, no one could take photographs in available light indoors without a flashlight, and that someone as rich as Carol could surely afford to have her piano tuned. According to my life’s companion, “It sounded terrible.” But I suppose that even the best pearls have some minor irritations.

Carol, rated M, is showing in selected cinemas nationally. Three and a half stars.

Evan Williams has reviewed films in The Australian newspaper for 33 years. He is a Life Member of the Film Critics’ Circle of Australia for services to film criticism and the film industry.In 2015 he received the Geraldine Pascal Lifetime Achievement Award for critical writing.

Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, Youth is a film for the young at heart – or at least for those aspiring to that happy condition. The main characters are a couple of blokes on the wrong side of 70, and it was noticeable at my screening that most of the audience weren’t too far behind. Youth may not have been the best title. For all its undoubted charms, this isn’t a film for the 18-to-24 demographic, much targeted these days by the major studios. That makes it something of a rarity – and a pleasure.

Sorrentino is keen on the idea of oldies discovering their inner selves and coming to terms with the passing years. His best known film, The Great Beauty, winner of all sorts of awards a couple of years ago, gave us a 65-year-old who has spent most of his life revelling in the fleshpots of Rome before hearing some nasty news. Among other odd characters, the film featured a self-styled “dwarf” and a nun with two crooked teeth. Among other odd characters, Youth gives us a grossly obese sunbather, a naked Miss Universe, a faded Hollywood star (nicely played by a faded Jane Fonda), and an assortment of less than glamorous geriatrics rich enough to stay at a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps. The shadow of Fellini looms large.

Fred Ballinger (a morose and taciturn Michael Caine) and his old friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) are among the hotel’s many disconsolate residents. Fred is a retired orchestral conductor and composer, famous for a one-hit wonder called “Simple Songs”, which he no longer performs in public because, as he somewhat enigmatically explains, it was written for his wife, who can no longer sing. Not even an emissary from Queen Elizabeth herself can persuade Fred to perform the piece for Prince Philip’s birthday. Mick is a film director working on what he believes will be the crowning masterpiece of his career – his “testament”, as he calls it – though judging from the assortment of actors and screenwriters assembled for the project, one doubts that the film will be the triumph Mick is hoping for. Perhaps Sorrentino will enlighten us in a future instalment.

Youth is described in the blurbs as a “comedy-drama” – a term that always fills me with foreboding. You will have gathered that it is seriously weird – weird, but fascinating, not to say beautifully acted , and above all, quite ravishingly photographed and designed. Sorrentino’s cinematographer, Luca Bigazzi, who also shot The Great Beauty, has a wonderful eye for lush landscapes (or snowscapes) combined with a taste for bizarre, often surreal, compositions. He can find beguiling patterns and shapes wherever he points his camera – hotel corridors, symmetrical archways, rows of reclining sun-seekers.

The “comedy-drama” consists of long passages of moody introspection relieved by occasional jokes, most of which are funny. There’s a delicious scene when Fred and Mick are relaxing in the hotel pool when a naked Miss Universe slips into the water beside them. Miss Universe is played by an actress called Madalina Diana Ghenea, who appears to have been well chosen for her wordless role. And I liked the scene when one of Mick’s actors (Paul Dano), sporting a little black moustache and an all-too-realistic Hitler uniform, takes a seat in the hotel dining room and proceeds to eat in solitary silence, much to the alarm and indignation of other guests.

It is a film full of little puzzles and unanswered questions – I’m still not exactly sure what happened to Fred’s lost wife – but the total effect is strangely moving. There isn’t a great deal of cohesion and narrative drive, but Youth is never dull, and whenever things get a little vague or perplexing we are given a lovely piece of visual wizardry. The film is a beautiful affirmation of the power of pure cinema. Of course you won’t see it at multiplexes. Try the art houses instead and you should be lucky. But hurry.

Youth, rated MA, is showing in selected cinemas.

Evan Williams has reviewed films in The Australian newspaper for 33 years. He is a Life Member of the Film Critics Circle of Australia for services to film criticism and the film industry.