An Ode to Love at the Crossroads of Sorrow

Frédérik SisaOP-ED

It says something that The Women of Lockerbie creates a strong, definite sense of place despite the lack of any real set design. An empty stage with a few industrial accoutrements, costumed actors, and that’s it. It also says something that the play succeeds in generating considerable emotional power despite Kate Mulligan’s tendency to overcook her character’s grief-fueled histrionics. And what does it say? That playwright Deborah Brevoort has crafted a potent examination of tragedy and its fallout.

Day After the Oscars, Check Out ‘Factory Girl’

Frédérik SisaA&E

Factory Girl: The title is appropriately loaded with meaning given the story we’re offered. Edie Sedgwick (Miller) — the conflicted ingénue and socialite — was a factory girl in the sense that she was taken in by Andy Warhol (Pearce) to hang out at his wild New York art studio. But just as Warhol’s art was produced, assembly-line style, by his “superstars,” so was Edie processed and chewed out in the assembly line of people Warhol took in, propelled to greater fame, and eventually discarded. A girl at the factory, a tragic product of the assembly line. Sienna Miller does a more than credible job portraying Edie, evoking irresistible likeability tempered by the dark gloom of her self-destructive tendencies.

And the Best Picture of 2006 Is…

Frédérik SisaA&E

The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences deserves a huzzah this year for giving us a bit of variety with their Oscar nominees. This is the first year in recent memory in which it seems as if no single film is set to dominate. Instead, there’s a chance for extraordinary achievements to be found and recognized everywhere.

Of course, what everyone is dying to know for Sunday’s Academy Awards show is, what picture does the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences think is the best for 2006? Let’s look at:

Countdown to the Oscars: Letters from Iwo Jima

Frédérik SisaA&E

There is a scene towards the end of “Letters from Iwo Jima” — and it spoils nothing to discuss it — in which two weary Japanese soldiers discuss how their first encounter with Americans unsettles their preconceived notions. Where they first thought American soldiers were weak-willed, cowardly and lacking in discipline, they discovered that the opposite was true. It’s a simple epiphany that occurs amidst a mixture of views among the commanding officers, from outright hatred of the enemy to the nuanced understanding, and even respect, shown by Gen. Kuribayishi (Watanabe) and his fellow cavalry officer, Baron Nishi (Ihara).

Back to Basics

Frédérik SisaOP-ED

I’ve been thinking a lot about communication these days. Specifically, I’ve been wondering why it seems like two intelligent people can enter a debate and leave without either one having learned anything or, gasp, having persuaded the other to change his or her mind. Is it really just a question of people not listening to each other, arguing AT each other instead of WITH each other? That’s part of it, I’m sure. But perhaps more fundamentally it lies with what they actually argue about more than how they go about it.

When it comes right down to it, just about any subject worth arguing about is dependent on other subjects. There are plenty of unspoken assumptions, hidden chains of reasoning, that will influence how a person’s opinion on any single issue is formed. Yet, these never get discussed beyond the immediate subject at hand. I’ll give two quick examples.

The Messengers  Shiny Package, Old Message

Frédérik SisaA&E

Watching “The Messengers” offers an opportunity to consider the mechanics of crafting a supernatural story. We start out with the universal premise that the supernatural disrupts our understanding of cause and effect, which underlies all the tricks and gimmicks that try to spook us.

Doors close by themselves, stains reappear no matter how many times they are cleaned, animals (and children) behave strangely. As variations on a theme, it’s hard to be surprised by any of it, not even by seeing our expectations tweaked to startle us out of our seats.

But the Pang Brothers, fresh from their career with Asian horror films, are consummate professionals. Their direction creates a credible, haunted atmosphere to a desolate country house — an atmosphere helped in no small measure by David Geddes‚ rich, stylish, but not overbearing cinematography. “The Messengers” may be by the numbers, but the technical numbers, at least, add up.

Bubble Helmets for Smokers

Frédérik SisaOP-ED

I wish someone would invent a helmet for smokers. Something like an astronaut’s helmet that would keep the smoke inside the smoker’s own airspace. I can see it now, a smoker walking down the street, sitting at a café, or just chilling, with a smoke-filled bubble helmet where his or her head should be. Wouldn’t that be great? Smokers and non-smokers, harmoniously co-existing in the same general vicinity.

This brilliant new invention comes to mind courtesy of recent news about the city of Belmont’s proposed smoking ban. The actual ordinance is rather, well, smoky. As the L.A. Times reports:

“A strict new ordinance is still set to be unveiled this winter for more public discussion and an eventual vote. But instead of just the flat-out ban on lighting up in apartments, condominiums and public places that captured worldwide attention, City Atty. Marc Zafferano said the first draft would be a menu of restrictions from which Council members could pick and choose.” http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-belmont29jan29,1,6689329.story

Countdown to the Oscars: The Queen

Frédérik SisaA&E

There’s something surreal about watching actors portray still-living people in situations from ridiculously recent history. Helen Mirren might as well really be Queen Elizabeth II, and it’s hard to imagine a younger Tony Blair as being anyone other than Michael Sheen. (The supporting cast, including James Cromwell as Prince Phillip, do very nicely, too.) But the feeling of peering into a parallel universe gradually dissipates once the story takes hold and the shock wears off. Then we’re just left with the surreal feeling of engaging the story through protagonist Tony Blair — surreal, given what we know now of a man who started out with a bright-eyed promise of reform and modernization and now hangs on for his dear political life. But for all that, “The Queen” takes us behind the palace doors for a story that remains memorable long after we leave. And if there is any truth, it lies in the fact that screenwriter Peter Morgan reconstructed events portrayed in the film based on accounts by anonymous sources close to the Queen and Prime Minister of England.

Countdown to the Oscars: The Pursuit of Happyness

Frédérik SisaA&E

If anything, “The Pursuit of Happyness” is guilty of laying it on a bit thick, despite Gabriele Muccino’s earthbound direction. Scenes like Christopher (Jaden Smith) telling his father Chris (Will Smith) that he’s a “good papa” reveals a definite and shameless maudlin streak, a willingness to squeeze as many tears as possible from the story. But it’s in the film’s length that it really becomes a bit much. To use an analogy, the story shows a dying horse taking its last breath, then proceeds to kick it a few times just to be sure we understand how bad things are. But we would have gotten it with two-thirds of the film, and the happy climax would have been satisfying in a way that goes beyond simply releasing us from a seemingly endless downward spiral.

Identity and Pathos

Frédérik SisaA&E

The title of the play at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, of course, is the demeaning epithet (bestowed by American GIs, we are told) associated with impoverished Filipinos. They’re so poor, so uncultured, so primitive — the stereotype goes — they eat (gasp) dogs. But while no dogs are eaten throughout the play, the significance of the title, “Dogeaters,” summarizes well the attempt playwright Jessica Hagedorn — herself born in the Philippines, moving to the U.S. in her early teens — to dig into the pathos of the Filipino identity and its projection abroad.