Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

B

While reflecting on some of the films I've seen so far this year, I've noticed an interesting trend, though I'd be naive to think that it's genuinely a "trend" and most certainly, it's nothing new. But I've been thinking about how many of this year's quality films succeed largely based on their ability to allow the masses to deeply comprehend what it's like to live the life of someone that most of us will never experience.

Call it the year of empathy building.

Four films spring instantly to mind. "Gravity," with its spare plot, left enough breathing room for us to contemplate true isolation and the stresses on an astronaut like no other film about space that preceded it. "12 Years a Slave" seems to be gaining stature as the greatest-ever filmed look at the ground-level atrocities of slavery, and I've spoken to a few African-American friends who have told me that though the stories of their families' past and their generational connections to slavery were always discussed and respected, this is the film that cracked open that experience on an emotional level.

The third film in my "empathy series" is the one I'm talking about here, "Dallas Buyers Club," which chronicles the struggle in the mid-1980s for those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS to navigate both the fledgling drug treatment bureaucracy and the fear-filled ignorance of an unenlightened public. The forth film, a sort of contemporary counterpart in some ways to "Dallas Buyers Club," is the excellent "Fruitvale Station," a film that anyone who is not black needs to watch to better understand just how the residue of racial injustice is still stuck on our fingers.

In my estimation, it's a great year when so many films have the real potential to generate true empathy in audiences. Perhaps this is even one of the measuring sticks we could use to define what makes a movie great. Alfred Hitchcock famous explained that a full quarter of the camera shots in his films were through the eyes of a character to draw the audience into the film as if they were a part of them. This year, the narratives themselves are, on some level, accomplishing the same thing.

"Dallas Buyers Club," if nothing else, will shock you into anger and sadness, thanks most of all to two brave and fantastic performances. Matthew McConaughey's shocking physical transformation and gut-level commitment to the role of real-life electrician Ron Woodroof is the cinematic yang to the yin of Tom Hanks' performance in Philadelphia. It is a primal performance, a fantastic achievement in a career so noticeably on the rise that McConaughey has to be a sure bet for an Oscar nomination in a year packed with fantastic leading male performances.

Of equal note here is the work of Jared Leto as Rayon, a drag queen with AIDS who strikes up a partnership with Woodroof to help distribute medications to treat the disease that have not been approved by the FDA. Perhaps best remembered for the TV series "My So-Called Life," Leto quietly accumulated a few solid performances but in recent years has put his most public efforts into his band 30 Seconds To Mars. This performance, however - if the award season tea leaves are any true indication - is starting to feel like a coronation. And Leto pulls off the feat of breathing a genuine humanity into the kind of character that would otherwise shock and scare the filmgoers of middle America.

The plot of "Dallas Buyers Club" - based on real events - is probably the reason why the film works as well as it does. This is no "gay film." In fact, though I'm sure that gay audiences have and will continue to support the movie with their ticket purchases and comments about the film, there is no doubt that this movie has got to be about as enjoyable for them to watch as "12 Years a Slave" or "Fruitvale Station" is to a black person in America. This is raw pain: angering, frustrating, defeating - so maddening that you wonder why you're spending you time watching because there isn't anything "enjoyable" about it, and catharsis shouldn't hurt this deeply.

Ron Woodroof is straight. In fact, he's downright homophobic, almost to the point of being a caricature of every homophobic, red state-living, beer-guzzling man in America. It's 1985, and the film opens with McConaughey's Woodroof banging two country girls backstage at a rodeo, just to make it clear to us from the get-go that this man ain't no pussy. So when the already-thin Woodroof suffers a few freak medical mishaps and is told he has HIV, he responds with an acid-spewing tirade of anti-gay slurs and indignant denials and retreats to his trailer to drink, do blow, and watch his buddy bang two local girls (or hookers?) while he watches from the couch.

Woodroof refuses to accept the doctors' diagnosis of 30 days left to live, but eventually faces it as he must, struggling all the while to comprehend how he could have contracted a gay man's disease as his friends start to learn of his situation and abandon him. He begs the benevolent Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) to allow him to participate in a study to test out AZT, a new drug to combat HIV. He quickly becomes as infuriated as any of us would be that someone with such a finite timeline on Earth would run a 50 percent chance of being given a placebo instead of the actual drug, just because that's how studies are conducted if drugs are to receive FDA approval. He starts looking for another way to score the potentially dangerous drugs, knowing that he has nothing at all at this point to lose.

The chance encounter that alters the course of the rest of Woodroof's life occurs during one particular hospitalization when he discovers that he is sharing a room with Rayon (Leto), a drag queen who reveals that he is taking part in a drug study and sharing his medication with a friend for a high payout. After suffering through Woodroof's obligatory homophobic tirade, Rayon and Woodroof strike up a partnership to expand Rayon's scheme into something bigger. Before long, Woodroof is making trips to Mexico to purchase cases of unapproved drugs and supplements to sell to men suffering with HIV and AIDS at home. Through his research and the help of a clever but disbarred doctor now living in Mexico and operating out of a ramshackle clinic, Woodroof comes to see AZT as a poison and a threat to improving the health of people living with AIDS.

Woodroof and Rayon rent hotel rooms and begin a "buyers club," modeled on groups that have sprung up in other major cities. The concept is that people pay a monthly fee and then have access to the drugs that they need, which allows those who run the clubs to avoid - on a technicality - the status of being someone who is selling unapproved drugs illegally. Their patrons are buying "club memberships." A central conflict of the film is Woodroof's constant run-ins with Dr. Saks' supervisor, Dr. Sevard (Denis O'Hare) and the authorities both local and federal, particularly those from the slow-moving FDA.

As expected, "Dallas Buyers Club" makes the Food and Drug Administration into a one-dimensional villain, an institutional bureaucracy of a government enforcing ridiculous policies that cost lives and wield power over groups of people they don't like. And frankly, when you come to empathize with what it might have been like to have HIV in the mid-to-late 1980s, it seems unlikely that there would be any other reasonable way to view the FDA. This insight provides viewers with the film's emotional motor, which is an underlying sense of anger and injustice at the least and, for some viewers, most likely a full-blown sense of rage.

We also get a moment similar to the one in "Philadelphia" where the straight man comes to respect - at least on some level - the gay man, though I must say that it's no less powerful or satisfying here just because you can see it coming. In fact, it's genuinely emotional here, in large part because the two men - for as profoundly different as they are - share the same disease. Some of the film's best moments come when the straight Woodroof is given the same public treatment as a gay man.

Where "Dallas Buyers Club" suffers a bit for me is in its direction, and Jean-Marc Vallee does not have an extensive filmography to suggest a rich history or clear style as a film maker. This film levels out on the same emotional plane for long periods of time. It relies heavily on cut transitions and jarring visual jumps. For lack of a better way to put it, it just feels like a movie that is working because of its performances and the nature of the true story being told, not because there is anything artistic being done by the production team to elevate the story to another level.

I feel confident that McConaughey and Leto will spend a lot of time in tuxedos in the coming weeks because "Dallas Buyers Club" is one of those award-bait actor's showcases. Many of Meryl Streep's nominations, for instance, come from average films. When the performance of the actor elevates the film to a higher level, a nomination is much more likely. There is no doubt that this film is elevated to another level by these two men. Aside from them, "Dallas Buyers Club" feels like a solid TV movie that would air on HBO.

For as much as "Dallas Buyers Club" is a film meant to help us understand what it would have been like to have HIV/AIDS during a time when no one understood the disease or its victims, I think the film generates a second topic of discussion that is equally challenging and perhaps even more far-reaching, which is the debate over to what extent our governmental, legal and medical systems should allow the terminally ill to control what they put into their bodies. It's a fierce debate that certainly resonates today, and watching the struggles of a man in the '80s, a reminder that the wheels of certain government agencies turn at a snail's pace.

Six By Sondheim (2013)

A-

Stephen Sondheim is one of my heroes. That has to be said right off the bat. The list of artists who have challenged me the most intellectually and moved me the most emotionally is an exclusive one, a personal sort of artistic Mount Rushmore that also includes Orson Welles, Woody Allen and John Irving. 

I don't have the time and space, much less the words, to effectively communicate how inspired I've been by Sondheim's use of language, how moved I've been by his gift for melody, or how threatened I've felt during any attempt to master a performance of one of his songs. As an artist, he's just at the peak of everything I could aspire to be. 

So in the moments during "Six by Sondheim," a new documentary focusing primarily on Sondheim's creative process, when he comes across as somewhat aloof, I remained enamored. I think we tend to forgive true geniuses of their occasional lapses in social graces and strays from humility. After all, they're just operating on an entirely different level. 

I was pleased that Sondheim's longtime collaborator James Lapine took up the task of attempting to piece together something out of four decades of Sondheim interviews to create this film. After all, Lapine understands as well as anyone how Sondheim works and wisely highlights the symbolism of Sondheim's belief that putting a show together is like assembling a puzzle. 

As Sondheim himself has famously said: "Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos." 

Lapine brings order out of this particular chaos by whittling down Sondheim's massive canon to six key songs, which he uses as a loose frame upon which to hang snippets of interviews and stories from Sondheim about everything from how to write a lyric to his career journey to anecdotes about particular collaborators. The songs chosen are perhaps relatively obvious but nonetheless effective. They are: "Something's Coming," "Opening Doors," "Send in the Clowns," "I'm Still Here," "Being Alive" and "Sunday." 

My biggest complaint about "Six by Sondheim" is that it's not long enough for fans like me. Its 86 minutes fly by and leave fans wanting more stories, more insights, more performances. What about "Children Will Listen"? How can you skip "Sweeney Todd"? 

But upon further reflection, what makes "Six by Sondheim" such a great documentary is in Lapine's ability to represent the core foundation of Stephen Sondheim in such a tight and organized manner. He simply grabs for some of the larger pieces of the Sondheim puzzle and uses them to illuminate some of the most vital factors that explain the man's artistry. As much as I hate to admit it, maybe less is more. And in choosing this method, I suspect that even viewers who do not know Sondheim well or don't obsess over him like so many of us theatre geeks do could watch this film and truly feel like they've taken an incredible dive into the nature of creating art. Through Lapine's inspired structure, we experience everything from where the author's personal life enters in to his lyrics to the dreaded (and cliche) which comes first...the lyrics or the music debate. 

To accent the documentary's structure, Lapine inserts nearly complete performances of each of the songs, mixing together vintage footage of original performances (as with "Something's Coming" and "Being Alive") with newly-staged clips shot by other filmmakers (like Todd Haynes' bizzare take on "I'm Still Here," reimagined as song performed by a man to an audience of women - and my least favorite part of this film). For "Send in the Clowns," arguably Sondheim's most famous individual song, Lapine even throws in a mashup of some of the many diverse artists who have covered the song over the past 40 years, an effective way of demonstrating the song's lasting power. 

Looking beyond the documentary film making itself, I find my respect for Stephen Sondheim ever deepening. It's hard for me to dislike a man who calls teaching "the sacred profession" and uses puzzle imagery to explain everything from putting on a show to life itself in a way that no one other than Orson Welles could do in "Citizen Kane." There were some ideas about Sondheim I knew about already from my time spent reading about him and studying him, and still some fresh surprises, particularly in how he uses an idea for a song title to guide his work, or how he approaches songwriting from the position of being an actor, rather than being autobiographical. (In fact, "Opening Doors" is included here because Sondheim says it is his only fully autobiographical song.) 

A lack of knowledge of Stephen Sondheim will likely keep many away from even being aware of the existence of "Six by Sondheim," which is currently airing on HBO and available on demand. And I'm saddened that the film was not shortlisted to compete for the Academy Award, though I don't know whether or not it was submitted. What I do know is that if you are someone who values art and music and ideas in your life - if you're someone like me who cannot go a day without a song or the passion music brings in terms of deepening our plights as human beings - you should seek out "Six by Sondheim" and be inspired by this man's ability to explain the necessity of art in our lives.  

Frozen (2013)

B+

They're calling it the greatest Disney animated musical since "The Lion King." I had to look up that list to see if I agreed. Do you know that Disney and its affiliated studios (like Pixar) have released over 50 feature-length animated films since 1994? Is "Frozen" really THAT good?

I filtered through the list of Disney releases and first eliminated the Pixar films, because most of them were made prior to the studio formally merging with Disney, and because those films are not traditionally-made animated features in that they are digitally produced and the music is incidental, rather than integral to the story in Disney's time-honored musical format. Then, I got rid of the non-musicals, straight-to-video releases and sequels, films made in partnership with other studios, and the amazing Miyazaki films distributed by Disney. And for the record, I just eliminated a half dozen films that are better than "Frozen."

Here's what you're left with: "Pocahontas" (1995), "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1996), "Hercules" (1997), "Mulan" (1998), "Tarzan" (1999), "The Emperor's New Groove" (2000), "Brother Bear" (2003), "Home on the Range" (2004), "The Princess and the Frog" (2009), and "Tangled" (2010). 

Some of the best songs from the Disney musical canon were still coming from that '90s output, even if those films were inconsistent when compared to the studio's early '90s renaissance. "Go the Distance," "Reflection," "I'll Make a Man out of You" and most of Phil Collins' Oscar-winning "Tarzan" score are still memorable today. From the list of 2000s films, my favorite until now has to be "Tangled," a surprisingly charming addition to the stack that saw composer Alan Menken back to his fine form and accomplished the as-yet unfinished task of pilfering one of the last remaining princesses in children's literature (Rapunzel) and forever turning her into a Disney creation. 

I'm a huge Disney fan, so I apologize for this extended introduction to "Frozen," which I've apparently repurposed as a sort of history lesson. And so to get on with it, I'll answer my original question. For me, "Frozen" is the second-best Disney musical since "The Lion King," stubborn as I will remain to decrease in any way my devotion to "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," a film I know is not perfect but one that made me weep and feel deeply, a film that met me where I was as a recent college graduate and is admittedly elevated in stature in my mind due as much to circumstance as to quality. 

After that, however, comes "Frozen," a visual feast that manages to be simple and complex at the same time and, though focused on the lives of not one but two princesses, captivate a van full of 8-year-old boys just as easily as girls. And I did the field work to prove that last statement, having taken my son and his friends to see the film as a part of his birthday party, which is also why I apologize for anything I miss in this review because I was frequently focused on them. 

We're far enough into our Disney film history to point out that "Frozen" sticks firmly to the studio's time-tested tropes. It's up to the viewer to decide whether it's good or bad that virtually every plot element, character type and storytelling device is recycled from a previous work. Clearly, Disney is working harder to recapture the magic of "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin" than even Michael Jackson did in his efforts to top "Thriller." 

Sometimes the easiest way to explain the plot of a Disney film is to draw references from its time-tested past, so here's a plot summary for the Disney-literate:

The story is loosely based on a classic fairy tale ("Snow White," "Cinderella," "The Little Mermaid," "The Princess and the Frog," "Tangled"), Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen." Anna and Elsa are sisters, toddler best friends ("The Fox and the Hound"),  princesses being raised in a castle in Arendalle, where their father is king ("The Lion King"). The king and queen have growing concerns that one of their daughters, Anna, has the freakish power of freezing anything she touches or even feels anxiety toward. She's like an emo Scandinavian Midas with ice for gold. They decide that it wouldn't be too psychologically damaging to their much more naive and plain daughter Anna if they separate the two girls, like forever ("Cinderella"). There have been a few mishaps, including that one time Elsa damn near killed her sister and some magical trolls had to heal her ("Gnomeo & Juliet"? I'm reaching here...) And besides, you can't be too careful when it comes to keeping your children tucked away from the dangers of the world ("Dumbo," "Bambi," "The Little Mermaid," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "Finding Nemo," "Tangled"). Ah, sheltering children via parenting by fear...quite possibly Disney's longest standing tradition.

So Anna grows more and more resentful of her situation, yet never clever enough to understand it. She just wants to build a snowman (like they did in "Beauty and the Beast," and P.S.: Anna is basically Belle). It's a shame Facetime hasn't been invented yet, because they sing lovely duets separated by a huge, locked door (still stuck on "Beauty and the Beast," now with a touch of "Brave"). And Elsa heaves and sighs, locked in her bedroom ("Tangled," "Brave") until the untimely death of her parents ("Bambi," "The Lion King") forces her to assume the thrown as queen of Arendalle. 

Elsa is, like, mad crabby about being queen because she feels she's best left alone (um...Beast in "Beauty and the Beast"?) and plus, her sister is the object of a boy's affections and she's not ("Cinderella"). That boy, Hans, breaks from Disney tradition and skips the climactic pursuit of a princess and proposes in the film's opening reel. Anna accepts because she is naive to the ways of the world and the nature of true love, which she will later discover was in her all along (every Disney movie with a girl in it). Walt Disney's casket flies across the ice (just kidding on that one...). Elsa soon takes off into the snowy mountains to live alone in her self-constructed ice castle, not realizing that she's placed all of Arendalle in a deep freeze. She sings an incredible song about her conflicting contentment/ennui in isolation ("Snow White," "The Little Mermaid" "Pocahontas," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "Mulan").

Still confused as to what exactly is up with her sister, Anna sets out on a journey to find her, reason with her, and request some global warming. Along the way, she picks up a dumb but useful companion named Kristoff, his big-hearted sidekick, the reindeer Sven, and a wacky, talking snowman with limited courage named Olaf. Wait...is this "The Wizard of Oz"? While on their journey, Anna comes to understand some things about her sister and her fiance. And to keep us from getting bored, the talking inanimate object sings a hilariously entertaining, showstopping number ("Beauty and the Beast," "Hercules") and the magical creatures made of stone get a nifty song as well ("The Hunchback of Notre Dame"). 

Because this is a Disney movie, the final minutes of the film burst into compassion and love and shit-tons of glitter. But I won't spoil that here because - in all seriousness - there are actually a few surprise twists I didn't see coming. And if you can't tell from this plot summary, there isn't much that you can't see coming. 

Two key factors elevate "Frozen" to near-greatness. The first is that in spite of its adherence to just about every previously-used Disney tactic, the film manages to bring something fresh to the table - genuinely complicated relationships. The naive Anna's ditzy whirlwind of a romance with Hanz does not develop in the typical Disney way, and the relationship between Anna and Elsa is refreshingly far more central to the film's story than any romantic entanglements. 

The other reason why "Frozen" is so special is because its music is a return to the glories of films past. Both "The Princess and the Frog" and "Tangled" had a few good songs apiece, but "Frozen" is filled with memorable moments, thanks to the work of Robert and Kristen Anderson Lopez. For the Broadway illiterate, Robert Lopez wrote the songs for both "Avenue Q" and "The Book of Mormon," two of the most exciting shows of the past decade on the Great White Way. They are also, interestingly enough, two of the most profane and irreverent, but Lopez and his wife capture only the sweetness of his Broadway work here, perfectly marrying it to the Disney style but with some ear-catchingly modern lyrics (like, when's the last time you heard a princess question whether or not her excitement could just be gas?) 

The film follows the classic Disney musical traditions, opening with a choral number and providing everything from the main character's aria of self-conflict to the goofy sidekick's crowd-pleasing highlight to the obligatory love duet. But placed in the wind pipes of Broadway vets like the dazzling Idina Menzel and the now-hot Josh Gad (in addition to the woefully underused Jonathan Groff and the surprisingly good Kristin Bell), the songs combine the very familiar with the slightly fresh in exactly the same manner as the film's story, resulting in a work that, well, just works. "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" is a sincere tear-jerker. "For the First Time in Forever" falls squarely in the tradition of "West Side Story"'s "Something's Coming," that formulaic but successful early-in-the-story song that sets up the conflict. "In Summer" is memorably goofy. And "Let It Go" is a soaring anthem of empowerment. You are almost begging on the inside as you first hear it that, come early March, you will be a witness to Idina Menzel being flown to the rafters of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles above Jack Nicholson and George Clooney, wearing an epic dress with a train that reaches all the way to the stage from the theatre's ceiling ("Wicked"). 

It's pretty clear that Disney has made it a goal with most of its recent films to evolve the decidedly non-feminist portrayals of its princesses. It's a cause they took up with "Mulan" but really poured their hearts into with "Tangled" and "Brave," and now "Frozen" stands as perhaps its most successful attempt to combine the classic Disney princess sweetness and merchandising potential with a more contemporary view of female empowerment. Those of us with little kids of our own now are, of course, the ones to blame for all of this. Somehow we were the ones to suddenly notice that Disney princesses are shockingly naive and dependent on magic for guidance. We don't want our little girls to have to rely on a kiss to save them! Oh, and "Pocahontas" is mad-racist! 

Now, for as much as I've used my space here to mock "Frozen," please know that I thoroughly enjoyed it, but was also objective enough to understand its flaws, which extend beyond its devotion to stealing bits from every Disney feature that's come before it. There was something disingenuous to me about the film's attempt to be both old-fashioned and fresh at the same time. There were moments when the two princess approach made it decidedly unclear as to where our allegiances should lie. And for as gorgeous as the animation was when it came to landscaping and sidekick creatures, what the hell is going on with Disney's choices in terms of animating people? Can't they refer back to their glory years for visual cues the way they do for everything else? Why are their eyes so big? Why do we want everything to purposefully look so digital? 

What will keep me coming back to "Frozen," though, will be the same thing that brings me back to all of the other Disney films I love: the heartwarming sidekick character and the endlessly singable songs. And, of course, the simple wisdom of a Disney classic, which in this case was actually first communicated by Madonna in her song with the same title as this film: "you're frozen/when your heart's not open."