This was another one of those weeks — when I saw a movie that I didn't particularly like and immediately followed it up with one I thought I'd like better but wound up enjoying even less. And so, desperate to produce a review of something that was actually worth watching, I saw one more.
Not to keep you in suspense, something worth gushing about did eventually materialize. But not before a lot of blood had been spilled. The gory details follow.
My week began with Breaking and Entering, the new movie by Anthony Minghella, who has made some interesting films (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient) and some pretty lame ones (Cold Mountain). Breaking and Entering might have edged into the "interesting" category had it been made a decade or so ago, but, as we all know, timing is everything. In the cold light of 2007, the movie's fussy, self-consciously artsy meshing of stories feels far too similar to Babel and a dozen films just like it — another step closer to a future where all movies will be the same movie.
Jude Law stars as a London architect with a depressed girlfriend (Robin Wright Penn), an emotionally troubled daughter, and a life that becomes duly entwined with various characters from very different cultures and classes (including Vera Farmiga as a Russian hooker and Juliette Binoche as a Bosnian war widow). The characters are generally drab (Law), mopey (Penn) or little more than sketches (everyone else), and we feel the movie working overtime to orchestrate connections between them. Minghella's script merely piles on one emotional crisis upon another, without pausing to really sink its teeth into any of them, and Breaking and Entering winds up feeling both tepid and cluttered, more TV soap than the social-commentary-cum-metaphysical-statement it clearly wants to be taken for.
Minghella's movie isn't exactly bad, but it leaves a pretentious aftertaste that gets you hankering for some basic, no-frills entertainment. A breezy romantic comedy along the lines of Gray Matters seemed promising. That's why I wound up seeing Gray Matters and, for what it's worth, there's not a pretentious bone in the movie's body. The bad news is that it also happens to be the worst film I've seen in ages.
Gray Matters stars the deep-dimpled duo of Heather Graham and Tom Cavanagh (TV's Ed) as a brother and sister so simptatico that people mistake them for boyfriend and girlfriend. First-time director Sue Kramer doesn't seem able or willing to tone down her actors' incessant bubbliness, and both of their characters spew rapid streams of wannabe-clever dialogue even flatter than what you'll hear on this season's Gilmore Girls.
The movie's real problems kick in about midway through, however, when Cavanagh meets the girl of his dreams (Bridget Moynahan), and Graham, to her astonishment, finds herself attracted to bro's blushing bride. I didn't believe a moment of Gray Matters up to this point, but what follows is so blatantly artificial, so thoroughly wrong-headed, that it's hard to keep from screaming at the screen. The movie's ingratiating sitcom sensibility spins out of control, unintentionally trivializing Graham as she flits around questioning her sexual identity with all the depth and intensity of a saucer-eyed Smurf. Bits of calculated "zaniness" periodically materialize, and relief comes only when the closing credits appear. It's a bit like the coming-out episode of Ellen had it been written by Nora Ephron in the latter stages of Alzheimer's.
Frankly, I'm a little amazed this movie was even given a regular theatrical run. Gray Matters is the sort of film that tends to show up exclusively at gay film festivals, and only then because it features a handful of hetero movie stars "playing queer," opening the door for some potential gay-straight audience crossover. Reviewers dutifully try to find something nice to say about the movie because its intentions are, theoretically, honorable, and then the film slinks away, never to be heard from again (until the inevitable DVD release).
I think I may have slipped into a coma for several days after Gray Matters, but when I came to, my luck had turned. I won't say too much about Eugene Onegin because the film may not be playing by the time you read this, but another one very much like it will.
Eugene Onegin is part of a new series of operas performed live at New York's Metropolitan Opera and beamed via satellite into select movie theaters across the country, including Tampa's Regal Citrus Park 20 (the next closest venues are in Orlando and Ft. Myers). The series hasn't received much publicity locally, which is too bad, because it's pretty spectacular.
The simulcast experiment began a few months ago with a dazzling production of Mozart's The Magic Flute directed by Julie Taymor (The Lion King), then shifted into even higher gear with Tan Dun's The First Emperor directed by Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers, Raise the Red Lantern). The production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin was a more minimal affair than either of those, at least visually — the stage is largely barren for all of Act 1, save for a few strategically placed poplar trees and a blanket of leaves covering the floor — but that's all the better, as it turns out, to showcase the sheer intensity of the performances (Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, both magnificent) and the complex emotional range and beauty of Tchaikovsky's music.
It took me most of my life to finally gain an appreciation for opera (rightly called "the final frontier" by the friend who urged me into it), but others may make the leap quicker and with greater ease thanks to the revolutionary marriage of great art and cutting edge technology served up by this series. There are still some kinks to be worked out with the high-definition projection (the image can't quite conjure the painterly textures of film), but it's hard not to be blown away by Fleming emoting on a 20-foot tall screen, in close-up. With all the excitement of a killer live performance combined with the facilitating power of cinema, Eugene Onegin had the crowd literally cheering, and it felt terrific to be in the middle of it all.
Performances of Live at the Met have been selling out, so Citrus Park has been adding occasional evening shows to supplement the series' regular Sunday afternoon matinees. (It's not a bad idea to periodically check the schedule for additions.) Remaining performances include an encore of The First Emperor on March 7, Rossini's The Barber of Seville on March 24, and Puccini's Il Trittico on April 28 — so get your tickets early and prepare to be transported.
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2007.
