Bob's Cinema Diary: July 8 -- 'The Tobacconist' and 'Guest of Honor'

The Tobacconist

The late Bruno Ganz, the great German actor who played Adolf Hitler in the explosive Downfall, makes one of his last screen appearances in The Tobacconist, a movie in which he portrays Sigmund Freud during the psychiatrist's final days in pre-war Vienna. It’s unfortunate in a way that Freud isn’t the main character in a story that focuses on 17-year-old Franz (Simon Morze), a young man whose mother sends him to Vienna to become an apprentice to Otto (Johannes Krisch), a World War I veteran who owns a small neighborhood tobacco shop where Freud buys his newspapers and cigars. Initially interested mostly in losing his virginity, Franz is smitten by Anezka (Emma Drogunova), a woman who — when compared to the sexually inexperienced Franz — already is doing graduate work in the bedroom. Gradually, the story absorbs the gathering doom that precedes the Anschluss, Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938. Anti-Semitism and contempt for left-wing politics divide the city’s population as the independent-minded Otto heads for an inevitable run-in with the Gestapo. Otto doesn't discriminate; he sells to Jews and Communists. Director Nikolaus Leytner’s re-creation of pre-war Vienna sometimes feels as artificial as a stage set. Moreover,  the increasingly disturbing political climate that invades Franz’s dreams, which we see, becomes repetitive.  You also have to buy the notion that a young man from the German countryside would regard Freud as something of a mentor and that Freud would respond. But Ganz gives Freud the weary charm of a man who has lost the certitude of his earlier years as his whole world unravels. The Tobacconist sometimes stays a little too close to the surface, but the movie has just  enough weight to make it worth a look.

Guest of Honor

Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, Ararat) has a knack for going his own way and the trend continues with the director’s latest, Guest of Honor. David Thewlis portrays Jim, a restaurant health inspector whose music-teacher daughter Veronica (Layla De Oliveira) willingly serves time in prison for a sexual offense with one of her teenage students.  The catch: She’s doing the time, but didn’t commit the crime. In a screenplay full of guilt and accusation, Guest of Honor touches on a long-ago affair that Thewlis’s character had with his daughter’s music teacher during the time when his wife was terminally ill. Thewlis never has had difficulty conveying the complexities of the characters he plays. But a muddled story and a framing device in which Veronica meets with the priest (Luke Wilson) who’s about to preside over her father’s funeral keep Guest of Honor from catching hold. Moving among various storylines and employing flashbacks, Egoyan never finds enough dramatic momentum and Veronica's encounter with a school bus driver (Rossif Sutherland) who’s obsessed with her takes an unlikely turn. Considering the rich emotional terrain at Egoyan's disposal, it's odd that the most interesting parts of the movie involve Jim’s restaurant inspections, which include a strange encounter with a couple that's preparing a meal in which rabbit will be the main course, preceded by a dish that may not whet your appetite: fried rabbit ears. Did I mention that Jim also takes care of his daughter's pet rabbit? Little about Guest of Honor made we want to subject any of this to further contemplation. If you do wish to give it additional thought  ... well ... that's what comment sections are for.

Terrence Malick's ode to a martyr

A Hidden Life devotes itself to spellbinding imagery as it tells the simple story of a man who refused to serve in Hitler's army.

It's not always easy to tell what director Terrence Malick is driving at in A Hidden Life, his three-hour opus about what can happen when deep religious faith intersects with conscience. Taking his movie from an Edenic valley in upper Austria to a grim prison in Berlin, Malick tells the real-life story of Franz Jagerstatter (August Diehl), a farmer who refused to serve in Hitler's army.

The Catholic Church already has honored Jagerstatter. In 2007, while still pope, Benedict XVI beatified Jagerstatter and declared him a martyr. Always ready to assert the mesmeric power of images, Malick treats Jagerstatter as if he already had been beatified. A Hidden Life isn't the story of an ordinary man who does something extraordinary; it's a reverie about a martyr. Jagerstatter's anti-Nazi stance led to his death by the guillotine in 1943.

Unlike in some of his movies, Malick (Tree of Life, Knight of Cups, and Song to Song) allows the movie to unfold in chronological order. But A Hidden Life remains an unmistakable Malick creation. At the outset, Malick bathes his characters in the hallowed light of pre-Anschluss rural Austria, creating a portrait of bucolic innocence.

Malick and cinematographer Jorg Widmer film the Austrian landscapes with reverence. The camera glides over rolling hills as if God were running a finger across the cheek of creation.

Malick, who wrote the screenplay, doesn't get too close to Jaegerstatter, presenting him as a man who embodies a way of life that's presented as if it were a nostalgia-tinged dream.

Early on, we get the idea of a world yet corrupted as Malick portrays life in the beautiful village of St. Radegund. Franz and his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner) pick flowers, play with their three daughters, swing scythes in flowing fields and live in what you might call blessed harmony with the natural world.

Trouble, of course, looms. Jagerstatter soon must leave his village to receive army training. He returns home (possibly with a farmer's exemption) but as the war wears on, he's again called up.

The sticking point for Jagerstatter: He refuses to swear a required loyalty oath to Hitler and finds himself imprisoned. He's told he can serve as a medical orderly, providing he takes the oath. Even when offered a way out, he won't compromise.

The German officials in the film (aside from the brutal prison guards) try to convince Jagerstatter that his sacrifice will mean nothing. No one knows about him. Nothing will change because of what he's doing. The oath is just a bunch of words anyway. They'd rather not put him to death.

As Jagerstatter's imprisonment continues, he's beaten and abused. He prays. He suffers but insists that others surely have it worse.

All of this comes into sharp focus in a private meeting with the judge at Jagerstatter's trial (the late Bruno Ganz).

Diehl isn't given much to say, but he summarizes Jagerstatter's stance in a conversation with a bishop whose advice he seeks before his fateful decision. If God gave man free will, then man is responsible for his choices, says Jagerstatter. The religious figures in the movie provide little help, suggesting that Jagerstatter give Caesar his due and make the best of a bad situation.

At times, we hear Jagerstatter's thoughts or those of his devoted wife, whose interactions with increasingly hostile village neighbors, play counterpoint to scenes of Jagerstatter's imprisonment.

Little of the dialogue can match Malick's imagery. With Malick, though, it's not the words but the music; i.e., the visual environment, that matters. It's not what anyone says; it's what we see.

The use of multiple languages in A Hidden Life can be puzzling. Diehl and his wife speak and think in English. The Nazis mostly speak German. Maybe Malick saw this as a way to remove Jagerstatter from his social milieu, to make him a lone figure who belongs to no one or nothing, except possibly the land.

There have been objections to A Hidden Life, many of them focused on the film's insistence on avoiding depictions of the ravages of war or to deal -- even in passing -- with the fate of the Jews. Jagerstatter objects to the conquering of countries that have done nothing to Germany: He views Hitler as evil without referencing Hitler's greatest evil, the Holocaust.

Moreover, representatives of the state gave Jagerstatter an opportunity to save himself, an option available to no Jew.

Those are fair criticisms. But it's a mistake, I think, to look to Malick for moral prescriptions. To fully appreciate A Hidden Life, you have to allow yourself to experience the elevation that comes from the way Widmer's camera embraces the light, allowing it to become a kind of literal embodiment of spirit. Malik moves slowly because he wants us to live in this light, much as Jagerstatter does.

Beyond that, A Hidden Life devotes itself to the belief -- though perhaps naive -- that the actions of one righteous man matter as much as anything else in history.

I watched a much more down-to-earth version of Jagerstatter's story on YouTube, a black-and-white feature that includes interviews with people who knew him. Titled The Refusal, the movie doesn't approach the cinematic eloquence of A Hidden Life, but it examines how those around Jagerstatter reacted to him in ways that Malick's film ignores. It also sees Jagerstatter as more of a staunch Catholic than Malick does, a man who thought that joining an evil cause would destroy his soul.

Religion emphasis aside, it's possible to conclude from watching A Hidden Life that righteousness sometimes begins with a single individual who's willing to say "no." Malick also invites us to ponder what expressions of individual conscience mean when they can't change the corrupted world in which we find ourselves. A Hidden Life is no scream of outrage at the world’s madness, only a hushed refusal to go along with it when there's no certainty about the outcome.

'Party' guests are out for blood

Despite a strong cast, director Sally Potter's arch little movie takes us nowhere we haven't been before.

It concerns me to know that I’ve sometimes felt the way Timothy Spall looks in The Party, a slender black comedy filmed in black-and-white. But even at a shockingly brief one hour and 11 minutes, The Party feels as if it could have been condensed into a 40-minute short as it builds toward a nifty punchline.

Spall, who has never projected so much doom and futility, portrays a British academic whose doctor has given him a fatal diagnosis. Haggard and expressionless, Spall’s Bill seems the personification of pitiless depression.

Joining Spall's Bill in this happily bitter ensemble piece are his wife Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) and a variety of friends: the catty, mordant April (Patricia Clarkson), her bromide-spouting boyfriend (Bruno Ganz), a coke-snorting financial executive (Cillian Murphy), and a lesbian couple portrayed by Cherry Jones and Emily Mortimer.

The group has gathered to celebrate Janet’s appointment to a ministerial post in the department overseeing Britain's health.

The movie revolves around Albee-style insults that the characters hurl at one another while harboring secrets that will be revealed as the movie builds toward its final surprise.

Part of the trouble with movies such as The Party is that they seem to ask us to feel superior to their embittered, pretentious characters while creating few points of real identification.

Directed by Sally Potter, who also wrote the screenplay, The Party's main thrust -- the celebration that goes terribly wrong -- feels awfully familiar. Clarkson deftly delivers her character’s withering lines and Spall convincingly dangles at the end of his character’s rope, but The Party passes without arriving at a consequential destination.

A revenge film and a bold British musical

DON'T MESS WITH THIS SNOW PLOW DRIVER

The Norwegian movie, In Order of Disappearance, has a regrettably familiar undertow, perhaps a result of the pervasive influence of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino. Following a schematic structure in which various sections are introduced with titles, director Hans Petter Moland takes us through a series of revenge killings carried out by a snow plow driver (Stellan Skarsgard). The driver's son, we quickly learn, was mistakenly killed in a drug-related crossfire. Skarsgard has the chops to make us believe that an apparently ordinary man has the grit to carry out such a relentless mission. A character called The Count (Pal Sverre Hagen) becomes the most colorful villain in the piece, a brutal fellow who's constantly being frustrated by mundane problems, arguments with his former wife (Brigitte Hjorth Sorensen) and concerns about getting his kid to school on time. With a movie such as this, much of the kick stems from how Skarsgard's Nils dispatches his prey, but additional complications ensue: Rather than focusing on Nils, the unsuspecting Count decides that a rival Serbian gang must be muscling in on his territory. A weary looking Bruno Ganz portrays an aggrieved Serbian gang boss who's also trying to avenge the death of a son. A desolate snowbound setting gives the entire enterprise frosted chill, and the movie manages to hold our interest despite its somewhat derivative feel. Credit veterans Skarsgard and Ganz for giving In Order of Disappearance weight it otherwise might have lacked.

AN ENGLISH MUSICAL BASED ON SERIAL KILLINGS

Forget the photo that accompanies this short review. The British actor Tom Hardy appears in only one scene in London Road, a musical based on a series of 2006 killings that terrorized Ipswich, a town in Suffolk, England. A forklift operator named Steven Wright (never seen in the movie) was convicted of murdering five prostitutes during a six-week period that attracted tabloid interest and set the Ipswich townsfolk on edge. Rather than follow a thriller path, the screenplay by Alecky Blythe explores the impact of the killings on the town -- both before and after the killer is apprehended. It's hardly surprising that the townsfolk begin to regard one another with suspicion or that some of their judgmental attitudes about prostitution are put on display. First produced as a play, London Road makes a reasonably good transition to the screen under the guidance of director Rufus Norris. Composer Adam Cook's urgent score fits the movie's fleet 91-minute length. London Road is further distinguished by the fact that much of the dialogue (including moments in which actors speak directly to the camera) derives from real interviews with Ipswich residents. In sum, not quite the groundbreaker it must have felt like on a London stage, but still worth a look.

Another thriller with tension and plot holes

The build-up beats the resolution in a sometimes tense thriller.

Walking out of a preview screening of Unknown – a new thriller starring Liam Neeson – I turned to my wife and said, “If that hadn’t been based on a true story, I don’t think I would have believed a minute of it.”

I was being facetious, of course. Unknown is not based on a true story, and it’s not particularly believable, although much of the time I’m not sure its credibility really matters.

More to the point: If Unknown had had half a brain, it might have been an exceptional thriller. But wait. It does have half a brain – the half that can concoct an intriguing premise, create real tension and spice things up with decently mounted action sequences.

The other half? The half that knows how to bring a thriller to a satisfying conclusion? That half never seems to have developed.

Still, Unknown keeps you involved, in no small part because its story takes place Berlin during a chilly November weekend; the movie has enough frosty atmosphere to slide past some of its rough spots.

Neeson plays Martin Harris, a botanist who flies to Berlin with his wife (January Jones) for a biotech convention. When he arrives at his hotel, Harris realizes that he’s left his briefcase at the airport. He grabs a cab, and races back to the airport. En route, the cab gets into a horrific accident. Harris winds up in a four-day coma.

When he awakens and tries to resume his life, he’s greeted with alarming news. His wife no longer recognizes him. Worse yet, another man is claiming to be Martin Harris. This impostor seems to be living Harris’ life.

This leads to the obvious questions: Has Harris gone crazy? Is there a scandalous plot afoot? For reasons neither Harris nor we know, is someone trying to push the real Harris aside? It’s either the world’s greatest case of identity theft or Harris has fallen prey to paranoid delusions, a distinct possibility because he hit his head during the vividly presented crash.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan) has skills. He knows how to create suspense, put an action sequence in motion and keep us wondering just when Unknown’s going to get around to making sense of a plot that’s better in the build-up than in its resolution.

Neeson (Clash of the Titans and Taken) seems to be making a habit of finding scripts that emphasize action, although this one does on occasion flirt with intelligence. Look, I like Neeson's work, but worry that his most interesting recent role took the form of a near-cameo in Paul Haggis’ forgettable The Next Three Days. He played an expert on jailbreaks.

The rest of the cast proves variable. Jones, best known for her work in Mad Men, seems a one-dimensional actress in a role that required at least two. Veteran German actor Bruno Ganz may be looking a bit decrepit, but still can steal a scene. Ganz plays a private investigator and former Stasi officer who tries to help Martin figure out what’s happening to him.

And Diane Kruger (of Inglourious Basterds) does a decent enough job as an illegal Bosnian immigrant who drives the cab that plunges Martin into a river. Kruger’s Gina may be able to help Martin straighten out the mess in which he finds himself.

The movie never really untangles all of its own messes, but it has some thrills and tension. In the end, you don’t need to believe its story to get something out of it. I hate to keep repeating this February mantra, but: Lower your expectations and proceed accordingly.