STAGE REVIEW: PATTERNS

A scene from Patterns. Photo credit: Ed Krieger.

By Ed Rampell

Numerous critics and commentators have observed that with the advent of TV shows such as Mad Men television has entered a second “Golden Age.” It’s appropriate that Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40 has launched its golden anniversary season with a blast from the past, harkening back to the tube’s first Golden Age with Rod Serling's Emmy-award winning teleplay, Patterns. Part of what made this early period of the new medium shine so brightly was that teleplays were presented on live TV on programs such as Playhouse 90 and Kraft Theatre, which broadcast Patterns on Jan. 12 and Feb. 9, 1955.

Serling was so gifted and renowned that he was one of TV and cinema’s rare writers and/or directors to become brand names for those out there in TV-land. Like Alfred Hitchcock, Serling hosted and introduced his most celebrated series, The Twilight Zone. This offbeat anthology program with sci fi and supernatural twists ran from 1959-1964 (its pilot had a Pearl Harbor theme), while the highly regarded Serling’s fantasy, horror series, Night Gallery, aired from 1969-1973.

Other highlights include Serling’s script for Playhouse 90’s 1956 Requiem for a Heavyweight starring Jack Palance, Keenan Wynn, Ed Wynn and Kim Hunter. A 1957 version featured a young Sean Connery and Michael Caine on BBC Sunday-Night Theatre. The socially conscious, versatile Serling also wrote feature films, such as the intense 1964 drama about an attempted military coup d’etat in the USA, Seven Days in May,and 1968’s Planet of the Apes, co-written by Michael Wilson, one of the blacklisted Hollywood reds.

This is a good place to return to Patterns, which, like Mad Men, is an incisive critique of corporate capitalism with a tinge of the social awareness of Proletarian Theatre. In the Theatre 40 production of James Reach’s theatrical adaptation of Serling’s original teleplay, Daniel Kaemon portrayed Fred Staples. This relatively young man (portrayed by Richard Kiley in 1955) has been recruited by Mr. Ramsey (Richard Hoyt Miller depicts the capitalist pig with snide panache, while Everett Sloane played the part in both 1955 telecasts) from a much smaller city and relocated to the big time in New York, where he is a rising star in the corporate suites at the Manhattan-based firm of Ramsey and Co.

Staples is confronted by ethical dilemmas that involve his older co-worker, Andy Sloane (James Schendel; Ed Begley played Sloane in both 1955 teleplays), whom Schendel portrays as a kind of Willy Loman-type character who was at the firm when old man Ramsey started it, helped build it up, but now, in his sixties, has seen better days. When Staples realizes why the bottom line, profit-driven Ramsey (the younger) hired him, he must make moral decisions. His attractive young wife, Fran (Savannah Shoenecker), serves as a distraction from his scruples, trying to lure him to do what is best for his career -- and hence her standard of living -- even if it should haunt his conscience. As played by the alluring Shoenecker, Fran is essentially a pre-feminism unemployed woman (her job, such as it is, is being Fred’s wife) using her wiles to remain in the bright lights of the big city, so the couple never has to return to Podunkville, USA.

Although they roughly depict similar eras in the Manhattan milieu of business, there are big differences between Matt Weiner’s Mad Men and Rod Serling’s Patterns. Originating in a far more repressive time with stricter censorship of TV, Patterns is sexually neutered in comparison to the hanky-panky of Don Draper and company. Produced 60 years ago, Patterns presumably couldn’t sexplore the sexual frisson between the nubile Fran and her husband’s boss or between the secretaries and the executives.

So, for 2015 audiences, Patterns may feel dated and the production, directed by the award-winning Jules Aaron, is a bit stagey. Jeff Rack’s set design, however, is a bit unusual in that it seems to have a two-tiered structure that reflects the drama’s underlying class struggle. Michele Young’s costumes evoke the period dress and there’s some good music and sound effects conjured up by sound designer Joseph Slawinski.

While Serling critiqued capitalism, as the denouement of Patterns reveals, it was not a revolutionary drama a la Bertolt Brecht. But it is still well-acted and, but of course, well-written, and an enjoyable vehicle for aficionados of solid theatre. Overall, the 60 year old Patterns is an appropriate choice for Theatre 40 to kick off its Golden Anniversary season.


Patterns runs through Aug. 23 in Theatre 40 in the Reuben Cordova Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. This is on the campus of Beverly Hills High School. For additional infomation: 310-364-0535; www.theatre40.org.

 

 

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FILM REVIEW: LISTEN TO ME MARLON

Marlon Brando in Listen to Me Marlon.

Legendary

By Ed Rampell

Marlon Brando may have died in 2004 but he has not gone gently into Dylan Thomas’ good night. He’s back!

In the interests of full disclosure your humble scribe should let you know that Brando is his favorite actor. Having said that, Stevan Riley’s great new documentary, Listen to Me Marlon, about the stage and screen legend, is a must-see for viewers interested in film/theater history, the art of acting, celebrity activism and, of course Brando, the man and artist.

Riley had access to a hitherto previously unknown, privately held treasure trove of audiotapes the prolific Brando (an avid ham radio operator, By the way) accumulated over the years for various purposes, including: To prepare and research roles; self-hypnosis; recitations of Shakespeare monologues; etc. These wide-ranging ruminations reflect on: Growing up miserable in Nebraska, the son of alcoholics; Method Acting; Brando’s family; many of his movies; his romantic life; and this activist’s radical politics.

Riley’s documentary explores and expresses the actor’s inner and outer life through the audiotapes, spoken by Brando himself with that distinctive voice -- in effect Brando is posthumously narrating the film, literally having the last word. Of course, there are extensive still photos and clips -- not only from Marlon’s movies, but also of his Stanislavsky Method guru, Stella Adler. Some of those who worked with Brando, such as Bernardo Bertolucci, who directed 1973’s Last Tango in Paris, are also heard.

In archival and news footage we see Brando’s battles in court -- briefly with his ex-wife, Anna Kashfi and their custody clash over their son, Christian Brando and then, unfolding like a Shakespearean tragedy, what Brando called “the messenger of misery” arriving at his home: Christian’s shooting of his Tahitian half-sister Cheyenne’s Polynesian lover, Dag Drollet, at Marlon’s Mulholland Drive perch.

There are also home movies of Brando in happier days at Tahiti and Tetiaroa, the nearby atoll he bought as the reclusive star’s private getaway. Although the documentary, which is generally sympathetic to its subject (perhaps a condition of having access to the tapes and for making the film?), doesn’t go into it, the killing of Dag apparently prevented Brando for the last 15 years or so of his life from returning to French Polynesia, where he would have been under French jurisdiction and subject to questioning. By building a resort at Tetiaroa the oft-contradictory celebrity brought tourists to his supposed refuge. And Brando’s eco-obsession to transform Tetiaroa into an environmental paragon failed, marring the previously pristine paradise with abandoned rotting structures. (I know, I saw them there in the 1990s.)

Among the most absorbing of Marlon’s musings are his political views. The documenatry shows this son of alcoholics and an abusive father developed an inherent sense of identification with outsiders and the man who would play a Mafia chieftain in 1972’s The Godfather maintains he couldn’t stand to see the weak get pushed around. To his credit, in his finest moments Brando used his fame and fortune to support and shine a light on the oppressed. In Listen to Me Marlonthe actor and activist is seen in clips at civil rights events and at the funeral of “Little Bobby Hutton”, the teenaged Black Panther killed by Oakland police in a shootout which involved Eldridge Cleaver. Brando is shown standing beside Panther co-founder and chairman Bobby Seale. Martin Luther King also appears in a different clip.

Brando is better known for his stance on Native American issues, although he once rather pithily pointed out that when it comes to who’s more oppressed -- blacks, Indians, etc. - “it’s not an ouch contest.” Brando is heard recounting putting himself “on the line” during an armed land struggle at Kenosha, Wisconsin, pitting Natives against National Guardsmen, discussing being “four feet from death” as bullets whistled near him.

Of course, in what is arguably the Academy Awards ceremony’s greatest political moment, Brando sent traditionally-garbed Sacheen Little Feather to decline his Godfather Oscar, due to Hollywood’s disparaging treatment of America’s aboriginal people with decades of celluloid stereotypes. Part of this unforgettable moment, which raised the spirits of indigenous occupiers at Wounded Knee and finally gave some airtime to Native Americans, is in Listen to Me Marlon.

Intercut with clips from movies such as John Ford’s 1939 Drums Along the Mohawk, Listen to Me Marlon includes a bearded Brando denouncing Tinseltown’s depiction of Natives as “savages” during a 1970s appearance on Dick Cavett’s ABC-TV talk show, proclaiming: “Everything we are taught about the American Indian [by Hollywood] is wrong. There have been 400 treaties written by the United States, in good faith with the Indians, and every single one of them has been broken. We like to see ourselves as perhaps John Wayne sees us, that we are a country that stands for freedom, for rightness, for justice. It just simply doesn’t apply. And we were the most rapacious, aggressive, destructive, torturing, monstrous people who swept from one coast to the other, murdering and causing mayhem among the Indians.”

Listen to Me Marlon is a stellar, riveting biography. Riley previously directed the first cinema documentary on James Bond and the most lucrative film franchise ever, 2012’s Everything or Nothing, which Passion Pictures also co-produced. But what Brando aficionados may most appreciate is Marlon’s mulling over of acting and his stage and screen career. It’s fascinating to hear Brando reveal what he thought in order to unleash his pent-up explosive rage in A Streetcar Named Desire, which catapulted him to fame on Broadway and then Hollywood. It is an illuminating example of how the Stanislavsky Method works.

 

 

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FILM REVIEW: FIVE FILMS BY CLAUDE SAUTET

A scene from Les Choses de La Vie.

A fistful of French film

By Ed Rampell

When one thinks of French New Wave directors the names Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer are usually among those that leap to mind. But now Rialto Pictures is theatrically re-releasing five films by one France’s lesser known, yet nonetheless noteworthy auteurs, Claude Sautet. The quintet is being screened for a week beginning July 24 in the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) format in L.A. at the Laemmle Royal Theater and cineastes who love their cinema sophisticated are likely to savor these motion picture bonbons.

Truffaut’s 1962 Jules et Jim is often regarded as the gold standard for movies about ménage-a-trois relationships. However, Sautet’s 1972 César & Rosalie gives that classic threesome a run for its money. César & Rosalie is a sometimes buoyant, almost always riveting account of the three-way love affair between Romy Schneider (Sautet is credited with reviving the saucy Austrian actress’ career), Yves Montand, and Sami Frey.

When Rosalie’s (Schneider) former lover David (Frey) returns after a five year absence he upsets the sexual applecart. As the aptly named César, Montand has been romancing Rosalie. While César is a successful scrap metal businessman, David is a much younger, better looking cartoonist. The youthful artiste and middle-aged wheeler-dealer clash almost immediately.

Around the time César & Rosalie was released I used to argue with comrades on the New York Left about the state of mind of members of the capitalist class. Other leftists believed that the bourgeoisie were merely following their economic interests while I maintained that the capitalists were crazy, pursuing clinically insane policies like the misbegotten Vietnam War. I wish I had seen César & Rosalie at the time, because Montand’s (who, offscreen, was a gauchiste) depiction of the gauche César is exhibit “A” of my contention.

In addition to violent mood swings that jeopardize those around him (I fully expected César & Rosalie to end disastrously, like Jules et Jim), César is the embodiment of despicable conspicuous consumption. He buys things just to brag about them and show off that he can afford them and how rich he is now. He dresses to impress -- if not with his sartorial splendor, with the price tags of his garb. In one scene César boasts about how many francs his new shoes cost - which underwhelms Rosalie, who undercuts his braggadocio by pointing out that despite how expensive they are, his shiny brown shoes are mismatched with his suit.

I was really absorbed by and enjoyed César & Rosalie, with its untraditional take on relationships and human behavior. With its outré flavor and bent, the only recent U.S. release that’s similar in terms of tone is The Overnight, that other outrageous comedy of manners that takes a skewed, offbeat look at monogamy.

Other Sautet films being screened through July 30 at the Laemmle Royal include the 1971 policier Max et Les Ferrailleurs, a crime thriller starring Michel Piccoli and Schneider. They also co-star in 1970’s psychologically astute Les Choses de La Vie. Piccolli, a major French star, also returned with Montand for Sautet’s 1974 look at male mid-life crisis among several buddies in Vincent, François, Paul and the Others, costarring Gérard Depardieu.

 

 

 

 

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FILM REVIEW: MR. HOLMES

Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) in Mr. Holmes.

The mystery of being

By Ed Rampell

When a character is too popular to die in the public’s imagination (and wallet) after his creator has, there is an inherent danger in the superseding of an original author with one who had absolutely nothing to do with the conjuring up of a popular protagonist in order to perpetuate the franchise. This sleight of hand is to literature what apocrypha is to the Bible. Dead authors can’t speak from the grave to defend their creations from grave injustices perpetrated against their characters.

This recasting has happened to at least two top pop culture icons and British literary figures: Ian Fleming’s spy, James Bond, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. Though fraught with danger (i.e., commercial trumping creative considerations), this is not necessarily to say that picking up the storytelling torch should never be done and the subsequent works will always be inferior to those work of the founding wordsmith.

The eponymous private detective in screenwriters Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s 1970 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the Holmes depictions in James Goldman’s 1971 They Might Be Giants and, best of all, Nicholas Meyer’s 1976 The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, are all worthy additions to and meditations on Holmes, who is arguably one of the greatest characters in English literature. Enter into this sub-genre screen scribe Jeffrey Hatcher’s Mr. Holmes, which helmer Bill Condon has given the full Masterpiece Theatre treatment to the script.

The distinguished English actor Ian McKellen -- who played Frankenstein director James Whale in Condon’s 1998 Gods and Monsters and Gandalf and Magneto in those endless Lord of the Rings and X-Men franchises -- plays the title character in Mr. Holmes. The 76-year-old thesp does so as a 93-year-old Sherlock living at what appears to be the white cliffs of Dover and as a younger Holmes, hired for what was to be his last case.

This complicated film flashes back and forth in time, and even finds our man Sherlock at Hiroshima two years after this mostly civilian target was flattened and irradiated by an atomic bomb (if this is what America does when we’re the good guys, imagine what we do when we’re the bad guys!).

When Sherlock embarked on a new case in Doyle’s exciting adventures he often enthusiastically exclaimed: “The game’s afoot!” But here, in Mr. Holmes, nearly at the end of his game, 90-something Sherlock must use his deductive reasoning skills and more to try and solve his ultimate case. Unlike in Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Red-Headed League, murder and bank robbery are not at stake in Mr. Holmes. These are mere child’s play in comparison to Sherlock’s final case: Finding himself alone after a long life, striving to figure out the meaning of life.

The lad Roger (the charming Milo Parker) helps Holmes crack the case. He is the son of Sherlock’s housekeeper -- no, not Mrs. Hudson, but Mrs. Munro, a widow who lost her husband during the Battle of Britain, played by Laura Linney. For some reason, Linney seems to have developed a specialty of depicting completely unlikable characters. Her Mrs. Munro is a real put-off, as was her Cathy Jamison character in the 2010-2013 Showtime series The Big C -- a cancer patient who invaded her teenage son’s privacy, belittled her husband (Oliver Platt, who almost always is a joy to behold) and was thoroughly unlikable. I watched Linney on Tavis Smiley’s chatfest the other day and she seemed much warmer than the remote, cold characters she appears to have made her forte onscreen.

Viewers who thrilled to the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce 1930s/1940s film series won’t find too much of their adventurousness in the more meditative Mr. Holmes. Indeed, some will likely find this complex rumination on aging and the purpose of existence that perhaps exploits a big name character Hatcher had no hand in hatching to be slow moving, dull, uneventful and hard to follow. There are also repeat  ponderings on bees and wasps.

When the title character ceremoniously reflects on those people, such as Dr. Watson, whom have mattered to him, Sherlockians may wince at the fact that Irene Adler -- the one woman Doyle allowed his straight-laced private investigator to express a sort of passion for -- is oddly omitted. What an oversight -- surely a scandal in Bohemia!

More thoughtful moviegoers may enjoy this well-acted feature that does to Sherlock Holmes what 1984’s Hugh Hudson-helmed, rather ponderous Greystoke written by Robert Towne and Michael Austin did to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan. One wonders what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would make of this revisiting of his greatest fictional creation? This critic would not dare to speak on his behalf; it would take one of those séances Doyle was so fond of to find out. Of course, fed up with public demands regarding his beloved fictitious private eye, Doyle himself unsuccessfully attempted to kill Holmes off at the Swiss waterfall of Meiringen, in a battle to the death with that “Napoleon of crime,” Professor Moriarty. In any case, let’s hope that the Doyle estate was well-paid for this latest iteration of literature’s supreme detective, who has been appearing on the big and little screen since before the cinema could speak. That’s elementary, Dear Reader.          

 

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: GREEN GROW THE LILACS

Laurey (Willow Geer) and Curly (Jeff Wiesen) in Green Grow the Lilacs.

Planting the seed

By Ed Rampell

This seems to be the stage and screen summer of “Oklahoma” -- and all of these productions set in what had been called “Indian Territory” have Native-American connections. The recent LA Film Festival screened Sterlin Harjo’s had-hitting indigenous indie about the homeless, Natives in Tulsa. Les Blank’s just-released documentary about Leon Russell, A Poem is a Naked Person, was shot in the 1970s and includes traditionally garbed Natives performing. Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum is presenting Tracey Letts’ August: Osage County.

As part of its current repertory season the Theatricum Botanicum is also presenting the part-Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs’ 1931 classic, Green Grow the Lilacs, wherein two of the townsfolk identify themselves as being one quarter Native. In any case, Green Grow the Lilacs inspired the fabled Rodgers and Hammerstein, who adapted Riggs’ drama into a full-blown 1943 Broadway musical extravaganza, with Fred Zinnemann directing Hollywood’s 1955 version of Oklahoma!, where “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.” (A production of the musical opens July 17 at Cabrillo Theatre in Thousand Oaks.)

The plot of Oklahoma! is similar to that of Green Grow the Lilacs, which incorporates folksy songs into the play, performed and sung by Curly (Jeff Wiesen), Aunt Eller (Melora Marshall) and the ensemble. These standards include numbers such as the title song (from which Riggs presumably derived the name of his play) and "Skip to My Lou" -- the tunes may be cornier than those stalks growing higher than an elephant’s eye, but when theatergoers received their Playbills they were also given separate lyrics sheets and invited to sing along during the choruses. This, of course, enhanced a homey ambiance that served this play about ordinary people well.

Green Grow the Lilacs takes place around the turn of the last century, before Oklahoma joined the Union and was known as Indian Territory or Indian Country, when Riggs was a boy. The simple farm folk and story are drawn from Riggs’ childhood.

The Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1931 production was produced on Broadway by the Theatre Guild, which was, among other things, part of the proletarian theatre movement depicting the common man and woman, presenting works by playwrights such as leftist John Howard Lawson, as well as plays by Eugene O’Neill, bard par excellence of the heartbreaking family drama. Green Grow the Lilacs was directed by Herbert Biberman who, about 30 years later as a blacklisted independent filmmaker, helmed another piece about ordinary people called Salt of the Earth.

Many are familiar with the storyline of Oklahoma!, if not Green Grow the Lilacsper se, so your plot spoiler averse reviewer won’t spoil surprises for those readers who aren’t. But allow this ink stained wretch to render these observations: Sex (and the thwarting of it) is an important part of the plot. Laurey Williams (portrayed with aw shucks aplomb by Willow Geer) spurns the advances of Jeeter (Fry, not Derek), a hired hand ignobly and savagely played by Steven Green. She then proceeds to pursue doing with Curly exactly what Jeeter had wanted to do with Laurey and had caused her such revulsion.

Interestingly enough, it is the repulsive Jeeter, the blue collar-less brute, who has the most class conscious dialogue in Riggs’ folk-poem, aware of the fact that he is looked down upon because he is a manual laborer with dirt under his nails who does not own land, property. As a sort of cowboy, Curly is a rung up the Indian Territory’s social ladder, and along with his better looks, is more appealing to Laurey. So it’s not a case so much of what is being sought as who is seeking it.

Laurey and Curly’s troubled attempts to form their sexual union can be symbolic of the Indian Territory’s transition upon joining the Union in 1907, becoming Oklahoma, the 46^th state. The Green in the title may refer to the territorial status of a pre-statehood land not yet fully “mature” as one of the United States per se.

In any case, Riggs’ play is a bit strange and doesn’t necessarily actually have a denouement per se. But this production ambles amiably and dramatically along where appropriate in a folksy way that WGTB founder, mid-Westerner Will Geer, would likely have felt right at home with -- especially as his TV alter ego, Grandpa Walton -- and this Green Grow the Lilacsis quite enjoyable. Some ticket buyers will get a kick out of the sing along portion in particular (follow the bouncing ball!).

Given that this seems to be the summer of the “Okies,” I’d be remiss not to mention the Theatricum’s other Oklahoma connection: That most famous “Okie” of them all, Dustbowl-refugee-turned-people’s-balladeer Woody Guthrie, lived in a cabin on the grounds back in the day when he and Will Geer used their artistry to organize unions, agitating for working people’s rights.


Green Grow the Lilacs runs through Sept. 26 at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: 310-455-3723 or see: Lilacs.

 

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FILM REVIEW: JIMMY'S HALL

A scene from Jimmy's Hall. Directed by Ken Loach.

Irish for more

By Ed Rampell

For those of you who are socialist cineastes and lefty film fans, who love movies in the tradition of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Herbert Biberman/Michael Wilson’s Salt of the Earth, I am the bearer of glad tidings: What is arguably the greatest contemporary leftist writer/director team in the English-speaking world now making pro-worker films are back! Just in time to help us celebrate the American Revolution, director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty's Jimmy's Hall opens tomorrow.

Thrill to expertly directed, stirring scenes of the class struggle! To speeches by downtrodden working class heroes standing up for social justice and human rights! Watch the mass hero, the collective proletarian protagonist, fight the iron heel of the state! What better way to celebrate America’s Revolutionary War -- certainly more fun than eating hotdogs and watching fireworks!

Based on a true story, Jimmy's Hall is about Jimmy Gralton (the handsome, charismatic Barry Ward), the only Irishman deported as an illegal alien from Ireland, the land of his birth -- without so much as a trial! Of course, Gralton's true crime was to fight against the reactionary church, aristocratic landowners and narrow nationalism by setting up a hall where ordinary people could dance to jazz music, study art and pursue a more class-conscious politics during the Depression.

It’s the class struggle dimension of their outlook that pits Jimmy's Hall workers against the narrow nationalism of the not-so-free Free Irish State of the 1930s. Here, the Loach/Laverty team return to historical terrain they already trod in the 2006 Irish Revolution epic, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, with Ireland’s leftwing struggling with the less radicalized nationalists.

Jimmy’s Hall also contains great acting, which enlivens the mass action mise-en-scene and sensibility. As Oonagh, Simone Kirby -- who has acted at the Abbey Theatre and Old Vic -- possesses a smoldering sexuality, whose love and desire for Jimmy has been thwarted by deportation. Even more heartfelt is Aileen Henry, who plays Jimmy’s mother. She calls to mind Vera Baranovskaya, who starred in Vsevolod Pudovkin’s 1926 Soviet classic, Mother, based upon Maxim Gorky’s revolutionary novel. Even more so, this Irish earth mother is reminiscent of Jane Darwell, who movingly depicted Ma Joad in another immortal masterpiece of the silver screen, John Ford’s 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s pro-union novel, The Grapes of Wrath.  

This is great socialist cinema in the Eisensteinian tradition of revolutionary filmmaking, a heritage that the Loach/Laverty team gloriously, lovingly perpetuate.


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FILM REVIEW: CARTEL LAND

A scene from Cartel Land.

Resistance is a two-way crossing

By Ed Rampell

Matthew Heineman’s documentary is not so much about Mexican drug cartels per se as it is about the resistance to them on both sides of the border. In Arizona, self-appointed, self-anointed border patrol vigilantes led by a grizzled vet named Nailer try to “protect” America from the drug dealers, as well as from undocumented aliens heading El Norte for what they hope will be greater opportunity. Nailer does not want them here.

South of the border, Dr. Mireles leads armed resistance to the Mexican cartels, arming townspeople to stand up to them. Some of the scenes have a Magnificent Seven type vibe. If the vigilantes up north have a right-wing aura about them, as the Mexican vigilantes standup to the cartels, Federales and military trying to disarm and disband them, then south of the border they have a revolutionary feel to them. The film ponders who the good and bad guys really are, with unexpected twists and turns along the way.

This is yeoman filmmaking, done at great risk to the filmmakers, as well as the participants.

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LAFF 2015: INFINITELY POLAR BEAR

A scene from Infinitely Polar Bear.

Boston blues

By Ed Rampell

Emmy-nominated screenwriter Maya Forbes’ Infinitely Polar Bear marks an auspicious directorial debut. This intensely personal film, which is reminiscent of Francois Truffaut and Richard Linklater’s movies about childhood, recreates Forbes’ troubled Boston girlhood during the 1970s. Indeed, Forbes’ own daughter, Imogene Wolodarsky, plays Amelia Stuart, who is mostly raised by her manic depressive father Cameron Stuart (Mark Ruffalo) after her mother, Maggie Stuart (Zoe Saldana), leaves the family to pursue a master’s degree in Manhattan in this heartfelt, touching and often humorous feature.

Somehow Imogene and her sister Faith (the delightful Ashley Aufderheide, the central casting version of an adorable biracial child) must cope with being raised by a mentally ill parent, while mom strives to support the family by advancing herself through higher education. Cameron is at the center of the saga, which is often ruled by his moods, his highs and lows. Although a Boston blueblood from a privileged background, these Brahmins have more or less cut the erratic Cam off from the family fortune. To tell you the truth, he actually is a loving, attentive (if decidedly unconventional) dad and the added responsibility of raising his daughters as a solo parent while Maggie studies in New York seems to somewhat ground him.

As the oft exasperating Cam, Ruffalo turns in a poignant performance. However, Infinitely Polar Bear (the term Cam’s children use for his bipolar condition) never fully explains why the beautiful, ambitious Maggie would marry a n’er-do-well loser like Cam, who spent their entire first date regaling Maggie with stories about his mental illness. What did she miss in this conversation?

As a female the sultry Saldana is far more attractive than Ruffalo is as a male, so why she wed this guy who becomes, at one point, institutionalized remains pretty much a mystery. Let alone why she had two children with this total flake (albeit a sometimes lovable one). One half suspects that Maggie attends a far away graduate school to get away from Cam as much as because she realizes that she must receive an advanced degree so she can provide for her kids (all “three” of them). I didn’t buy their relationship; perhaps this lapse in credulity is because Infinitely Polar Bear is told from a daughter’s point of view, and it may be too difficult and painful to fully pry into and comprehend one’s own parents’ tumultuous private lives.

Another shortfall is how little Infinitely Polar Bear deals with the fact that the couple is multi-racial and their children are biracial. As the massacre in Charleston and a string of police/vigilante killings of blacks demonstrate, racism is very much alive and un-well, still a dominant feature of American life. Indeed, in writing about U.S. history one could justifiably paraphrase Marx and Engel’s dictum on class in chapter 1 of The Communist Manifesto by proclaiming: “The history of all hitherto existing American society has been the history of race struggles.” If that is still true in 2015 USA, imagine how much truer it must have been in 1970s Boston, when the city was gripped with convulsions over busing in order to desegregate schools. But Infinitely Polar Bear largely ignores and glosses over the issues of race and of two black children being raised largely by a very Caucasian father.

In a canny, clever bit of casting, Keir Dullea plays Cam’s father Murray Stuart in a revealing cameo. Before Dullea attained fame as the astronaut who tangles with the murderous computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dullea depicted the eponymous David, a mentally ill young man who finds love with another troubled youth in 1962’s, David and Lisa.

Despite its flaws Infinitely Polar Bear is well worth seeing by moviegoers who cherish character-driven indies. This critic looks forward to Maya Forbes’ future features.

Infinitely Polar Bear also opens in theaters, tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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