Archive for May 24th, 2009

The Walker

Everyone loves a Scandal

Paul Schrader’s tale of scandal and sexual intrigue…

The Walker is stylish and superbly written film by Paul Schrader, director of such disturbingly transgressive movies as The Comfort of Strangers and AutoFocus. Like his other films, Schrader’s classic murder mystery focuses on eccentric characters embroiled with dubious sexuality and moral deviancy set in modern day Washington DC. Woody Harrelson takes the role of Southerner Carter Page III, an effeminate companion to the wives of senators and power-hungry politicians escorting them to elegant social occasions in the American Capital’s array of Embassy receptions and Gala Operas.

Vain, witty and immaculately dressed in cufflinks and double breasted suits, Carter Page is a throwback from a more genteel age, playing canasta at a discreet hotel every Wednesday with his close circle of lady friends, played with great luminosity by such talented actresses as the wry Lily Tomlin, the husky-voiced Lauren Bacall and the delicately elusive Kristin Scott Thomas.

When one of these friends is seemingly involved in a murder, scandal is imminent and Carter decides to play devil’s advocate trying to protect his friend, Lynn Lockner, a senator’s wife (Scott Thomas), while attempting to maintain his own social standing in this precariously powerful society, where politicians are out for blood and scandals follow indiscretions and whispering campaigns could ruin reputations.

What Schrader as director and writer of this insightful film does so brilliantly is to create a contrast between the world of Washington’s high society and the more secretive one of the capital’s homosexual community, where relationships are fragile and even under threat. Harrelson is excellent at playing the complex Carter Page, a socialite born and bred of Virginian stock and what is known as a Walker (or companion) of these wealthy ladies, whose husbands are busy with the cut-throat world of American politics, while also trying to maintain a secret relationship with his foreign lover, a news journalist and photographer who’s only dream is to live in a more openly accepted environment like New York’s Soho. With plush interiors of elegant hotels and salons juxtaposed against the harsh bureaucracy of police stations and dim back alley bars, Schrader creates a sense in The Walker that behind the façade of polite society there lurks alternative underworlds of devious deceptions and sinister encounters, especially true in the slippery and dangerous intersecting worlds of politics and sexual encounters.

Besides creating these contrasting settings, the characters in the film ooze wit and sophistication, not to mention an exaggerated opinion of themselves, while also displaying the hypocrisy, greed and ambition which many of the rich and famous for prey to. Schrader also leaves countless clues to the points of reference by which he would like the viewer to see his film, from exquisite art works, to works by Dominick Dunne, the New York social commentator and Truman Capote as well as sharp references to America’s current involvement in Iraq, as the camera picks up on random Television images underlined by the photography that Carter Page’s lover does, photographs of naked men masked and chained up, reminiscent of those tortured Iraqi prisoners held in American foreign custody, which came to the media’s attention recently.

The Walker is an intelligent and witty film, a measured social commentary on the centers of political power, and the people that control a nations destiny, while sacrificing their own. I would recommend it as essential viewing to anyone who appreciates stylish filmmaking and has a sophisticated sense of how intricately woven aspects of politics, sexuality and wealth are to making up a society as powerful and dominant as the USA.

 Quantum of Solace

A Novella about Playboys in the Bahamas

Ian Fleming’s short story of the Quantum of Solace is a far cry from its cinematic reinvention with only the thematic strain of revenge being retained. In the novella, James Bond hears a story whilst dining at the Governors mansion in the Bahamas of a man who marries an air hostess on a flight from Lagos, Nigeria to London and takes his new bride to Nassau where he is posted as a colonial official of the Caribbean island. Remember the story was written in the 1950’s when Britain’s colonial influence stretched far and wide. In the Bahamas the colonial civil servants new wife proceeds to have an affair with the wealthy local golf pro at the Country Club and when the seemingly mild husband finds out about his wife’s indiscretion, he takes revenge not only on his wife but also on her lover.

The strange term of a quantum of solace is as Fleming explains it when a man single handedly takes revenge for something or someone that has wronged him. So naturally whilst an idle gossip at a lavish dinner party would not really make an engaging Bond film, the theme of revenge certainly would. A 21^st century Bond, the recognizable character of the most successful film franchise ever, who in every film has to reflect not only the decade but the popular tastes of a new generation of film goers?

The first Bond film was in 1962 and its now 2008, that is a lifetime in entertainment history. So as with Casino Royale, the newly cast Daniel Craig, a blond Bond continues the iconic role of superspy, hell bent on revenge for the mysterious organization responsible for the death of his first love, Vesper Lind who perished in the murky waters in Venice…

Quantum of Solace opens spectacularly with an intensive car chase, Italy and then after the retro opening credits (not designed this time by Maurice Binder), continues with a high-octane fight sequence in a Cathedral in Sienna culminating in a discovery that there was a breach in security in Mi6. Further technological investigation tracks down that the informant who Bond quite intently dispatches in Italy was working for the mysterious Quantum organization and was receiving funds from a front man in Haiti. As in all Bond films, James tracks the spy trial to another exotic location to find out who his real enemy is.

The Spy Trial continues

In a warehouse in Port-au-Prince, a Bolivian girl Camille played with a lethal panache by Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko, who if anyone managed to catch the film version of the PC game Hit man, would know that Olga is not shy when it comes to taking on gritty action roles. Camille is on her own personal quest for revenge and Bond soon meets the mild but manical villain Dominic Greene, a French-born environmentalist who has sinister plans for Bolivia. As with all Bond films, he follows the villain to a spectacular meeting in Berlenz, Austria, while during a stunningly contemporary production of Puccini’s Tosca, Greene reveals his sinister plans for Bolivia and South America as a whole. Interestingly it is the evil plans of every Bond villain that has always accurately reflected the time in which the films are made. If it was Moonraker, (1979) it was Drax’s conquest of space. If it was The World is Not Enough (1999)’s it was Renard’s control of the world’s supply of oil from Azerbaijan. In 2008, in a world very concerned about climate change and ecological transformation, in Quantum of Solace, it is Dominic Greene’s desire to control a continent’s water supply, that precious resource that like oil is also slowly dwindling away.

With Marc Foster, director of such captivating films as Finding Neverland, Monsters Ball and The Kite Runner, at the helm of Quantum, he brings a certain distinct aesthetic to the 22^nd James Bond, Quantum of Solace, while retaining the dark undertones of blind revenge at all costs as much as solving the mystery of Vesper Lind’s death in Casino Royale. Quantum is a direct continuation of Casino Royale; the first time this sequential dedication has been used in the Bond franchise, so clearly those viewers who followed Casino Royale closely will enjoy Quantum of Solace.

Quite different from the usual Bond fare

A note of warning, this Bond film is more in the style of the Jason Bourne Trilogy and a far cry from those cavalier Bonds films of the Roger Moore era with his effortlessly wit and charm. Here Daniel Craig portrays a man set on revenge, taking no prisoners and not inclined to follow orders, while displaying a physicality and brutality quite brazen and skillfully managing to reinvent one of the longest running and suave filmic characters ever created. Ian Fleming would be proud were he alive today. In Quantum of Solace, the producers were truly appealing to a new 21^st century generation of viewers making Bond much more physical, less charming and equally deadly. That was always the key to the success of all 22 Bond films was their ability to reinvent the formula to reflect the tastes of the cinema going audience of whichever decade was current. Obviously the stable ingredients of nasty villains, gorgeous Bond girls, exotic locations and loads of amazing action sequences were always part of that lucratively and wildly successful Bond franchise.

See Quantum for the car-chase sequence in Sienna, the Austrian opera scene and of course the final showdown at the gorgeous Dunes of Sands Hotel in central Bolivia, which is actually shot in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

Don’t expect charm, but a degree of panache and watch out for some references to Goldfinger and some of the earlier 1960’s bond films, so popular with generation that adored Sean Connery as 007. In 2008, Quantum of Solace is no doubt, James Bond exotically reinvented for a new cinematic generation and in that respect the film achieves its aim, and has already grossed more money than Casino Royale…