Bright Star

Bright Star, written and directed by Jane Campion (The Piano), is visually lovely, but as a cinema experience it disappoints. The film is composed of a stream of pastoral scenes set in a country estate in Hampstead, England in the early 1800s—an ongoing collage of beauty. Soft breezes that come in through the window and blow wisps of hair around the heroine’s face, joyous walks on the heath, flowers in the tall grass, snow on the grounds. But all this cannot overshadow the stops and starts of the movie and the feeling that it is going nowhere. You find yourself waiting for the story to kick in and flow, but it somehow never does.

Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) and her family live next to the poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his mentor, Mr. Brown (Paul Schneider). The amorous feelings that Fanny and Mr. Keats have for each other are apparent moments after the film begins. But we are to understand relatively quickly that society’s rules regarding income and station prohibit the two from being married. In spite of that, the two refuse to exist apart. And she becomes his muse. They take walks together on the grounds, gaze at each other longingly, and sometimes they speak to each other through the lines of Keats’ poems. But if the goal was to depict a longing that is full of passion and desire, Bright Star misses.

For those of us who enjoy Keats’ poetry, it’s a treat to hear the lines spoken so well against the sumptuous and romantic background of the countryside and softly lit interiors. And it’s pleasing to observe the fashions of the times—the detail in its ruffles, crocheted shawls, gauzy sleeves, and elaborate hats. But don’t be surprised to find yourself ready for the end of the movie anytime, rather than savoring each moment like you are likely to have done watching Ms. Campion’s exquisitely sensual film, The Piano.

Shot by Greig Fraser, it is indeed the visual aspect of the movie that is Bright Star’s best part. Nature is the match for Keats’ romantic verse and letters to Ms. Brawne. Mr. Whishaw is believable as a frail poet who is plagued with a sense of failure and who loves Fanny in spite of what society tells him he cannot do. Ms. Cornish is lovely in her portrayal of Fanny—crisp, pure of heart, witty and a flirt, but unflinchingly devoted to her Mr. Keats. But to compare the depth of this performance to the one she delivered as Candy in the movie of the same name, where she played a young addict opposite Heath Ledger, we see what is perhaps missing in the movie as a whole. We are not taken in. We do not go inside the characters. What should be fire is warm at best, in spite of what we know is supposed to be the passionate, though unconsummated love between the two main characters. We are too easily able to maintain a distance from them. Nothing takes hold of our emotions for the two hours we spend in the movie theater. Rather, we leave our seats easily, exit the theater and go about our business.

Fish Tank

Slice of life and riveting, Fish Tank takes you inside the grim life of a girl who lives in a rough housing project in England’s Essex. It’s a reality show—but not the kind you see on TV. This kind is the real stuff. And it’s poetry. Beautiful. Gritty. And incredibly sexy.

Not unlike a fish tank where the creatures that swim around can see out, but are trapped within, the housing project is inhabited by people with disenchanted lives—girls who swear with the same rapid-fire fluidity as their moms and dream only of performing on rock videos, young men who emulate rap stars and two-bit criminals, their parents trapped in the confines of lost dreams or continuing delusions.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is 15, finds escape from the drab, trapped existence she leads by dancing to hip-hop tunes and drinking booze whenever she can get her hands on it. She’s angry and wants everyone to know it. She screams and squirms, greeting most of what she encounters with personal resentment. Mia is friendless, intolerant of life around her. She was kicked out of school for reasons that are not revealed in the film. But we can easily guess why—she’s a rebel with a loud mouth and fierce exterior. When her mother, Joanne, played with unflinching realism by Kierston Wareing, asks her, angrily, "What’s your problem?" Mia responds in an outpouring of hatred and frustration, “You’re my problem.”

Mia spends much of her life moving about, angrily observing life around her. Her refuge, or temporary escape from the confines of the apartment she shares with her mother and younger sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) is going to the vacant apartment upstairs. There, wearing a hoodie and sweats, she moves in sync with the beat of rap songs she listens to from her portable CD player. Her face is mostly expressionless as she looks out the window to the world outside. Her vista seems endless. As she dances, her ponytail sways back and forth, as do her large hoop earrings. Her gaze far-reaching and unsmiling, Her hopes and dreams wordless, but resonant nevertheless.

During one of her walks into an area not far from where she lives, she spots a white horse tethered by a chain and metal lock. The area is bleak, a wasteland of trailers, dry grass. Mia’s sense of justice and the kindness she feels toward the horse is somehow a metaphor for her own life. She wants to set the horse free.

Mia is a girl with a jagged edge. A problem and obvious annoyance to her mother who seems more like a skanky older sister, Mia seems to have a certain wisdom her mother doesn’t share. When Connor, the mother’s hunky boyfriend, enters the picture, the household changes. The mother curtails her incessant badgering of her daughter. Mia is visibly taken by Joanne’s boyfriend, played so well by Michael Fessbender (Inglourious Basterds). He exudes the natural charm and irresistible sexiness of the character, as well as an element of wholesome caring, so missing in the household before his appearance. But it’s clear from early on that he has more than a wholesome interest in his supposed girlfriend’s daughter.

There is a scene where Connor takes Joanne, Mia, and her younger sister on a car ride in the country. He is taking them out of the ‘fish tank’ and no one reacts to it with more enthusiasm than Mia. When Connor plays “California Dreamin’ “ performed by Bobby Womack, we see Mia in profile, the wind from the partially open car window playing with her hair. Her expression is softer than before. There is even a hint of a smile. We catch Mia ever so subtly moving her head in time with the beat of the song. She likes it. Connor catches the look in the rearview and there is a moment shared between, a faint and tantalizing glimmer of sexuality that passes between the two that we know is a promise of what is to come.

The story moves with the swiftness and ease of a gently, sometimes turbulent flowing river. The cinematography by Robbie Ryan is breathtaking at times—not only in terms of moody skies that accentuate the feeling of the moment but in the angles. One such instance is when Connor puts Mia, who has passed out on her mother’s bed, to bed in Mia’s own room. His actions in her bedroom are seen from her viewpoint through the crook of her arm. And then we see her from the reverse angle, as if from Connor’s p.o.v.

Fish Tank is a true work of art and is the latest movie from Academy Award-winning British writer and director Andrea Arnold (Red Road), who won the coveted Palme d’Or for her film this year.

It is the film debut of Rebecca Griffiths, who plays Mia’s younger sister, Tyler. Ms. Griffiths plays her character with all the ferocity and angst of a child who, while struggling to survive in the adult world she finds herself in, seems to know on some deeper level to what degree she is being robbed of her childhood.

But the film belongs to Katie Jarvis in the role of Mia. It is her first acting role. A remarkable performer, Ms. Jarvis lives and breathes the life of Mia with an intensity that makes it seem she isn’t acting at all, but rather revealing the naked truth of who she is to the camera. Like the best screen actors, she conveys everything through her eyes. The story goes that Ms. Jarvis was discovered on an Essex train platform. She was having an argument with her boyfriend.

Darren Aronofsky’s 1998 film, Pi

Shot in black and white reversal that achieves a contrast so stark, it’s almost painful to watch, the film focuses on a number theorist, Max Cohen (played by Sean Gullette, a film school buddy of director Aronofsky) who stands in front of a bathroom mirror and methodically draws a small circle on a designated part of his shaved head, then proceeds to drill a hole into it. Max’s mathematical genius is in great demand--by a Wall Street firm that believes he holds the key to the stock market and a group of Hassidic Jews who believes his work will lead to the true name of God. But in the end Max doesn’t want his genius. He wants to be “normal.”

The film, the result of a 28-day shoot with virtually no budget, won Aronofsky the 1998 Sundance Film Festival award for best director. Another friend from film school, Eric Watson, was the cinematographer for the film. Aronofsky wrote the script from a story by Watson, Gullette, and himself.

Pi plunges you into a world that is uncomfortable, creepy, the same kind of everyday “horror” that is depicted in Aronofsky’s later work, Requiem for a Dream (where Watson was also the cinematographer). In both films the main characters are under siege. Max endures crazed rabbis and cloying stockbrokers running after him, mercilessly picking and tugging at his incredible mind. He’s a man who is never at ease.

Max can relate only to his computer and occasionally seeks the understanding of his mentor, Russian mathematician Sol Robeson, played by Mark Margolis (Alberto in Scarface). Robeson has been pursuing the same calculation as Max all his life, but even Robeson tries to get Max to calm down, warning him that his very life is at stake.

Max is obsessed with patterns, the patterns he sees in everything—from shells to numbers. He believes that math holds the key to the universe—that by figuring out the mathematical pattern inherent in everything, he can understand everything. He’s a person who lives in his mind—his private heaven and hell.

The genius of the film is Aronofsky’s ability to make you feel what Max feels. It’s shot from the p.o.v. of the protagonist. Although you're on the other side of the celluloid, you don’t feel safe. It's if you're inside Max, feeling his vulnerability, his aloneness, and the bittersweetness of his genius. You feel his doleful desire to connect with the rest of the world, not as an intellectual oddity, but as one of “them.” And yet you find yourself not wanting him to give up his genius just to be “human.”

The wobbly film footage, achieved by hand-held camera, along with a dark, hypnotic and sometimes disturbing musical score by Clint Mansell lures us into the subterfuge that is Max’s world and makes it tortuously alive. The grainy high contrast images and repetitive music riffs stab at our insides and bring us into how it feels to be Max Cohen, a man who suffers seizures that attack him without warning and leave him drenched and helpless on the floor. When he drills the hole into his head, is it to remove the seizures or to remove the genius? Does he know that one is related to the other?

His dark existence is reminiscent of that of Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man in the novel by the same name. It’s one of constant agonizing and isolation from the rest of the world. Max’s life is spent primarily in the confines of his dingy New York apartment in the company of his homemade mainframe computer. Hour after hour he transfuses his computer with his own sweat and genius, dedicated to calculating the true Pi and the pattern within the figure, believing that the pattern is the source of all patterns in the universe. As viewers we are sucked into the vortex Max finds himself in, spiraling down further and further into a dark, oppressive place where all he seeks is the world to leave him alone so that he can commune with it. In the end, he’ll do anything to be “normal.”

Interesting sidenote:
Although the drilling into the head, among other things, is a fictional event, the character of Max may be based on the Chudnovsky brothers (David and Gregory). Born in the Soviet Union near Kiev, the brothers got their PhDs in math from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Gregory was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder of the muscles, myasthenia gravis, which led them to Paris and then USA for help.

In the early nineties in a rundown apartment near Columbia University in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the brothers rented two supercomputers with which to calculate Pi and essentially lived off the income of their respective wives. Gregory, who needed assistance even to stand, did everything from his bed. Eventually the brothers built their own supercomputer from mail order parts in the apartment. The machine burned 2000 watts of power and ran day and night. In a March 2, 1992 article published in New Yorker, author Richard Preston wrote that the brothers were afraid to shut it down, because it might die. “[They call] their machine m zero. It occupies the former living room of Gregory's apartment, and its tentacles reach into other rooms.”

Gregory was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in mathematics. Thanks to the additional money from the fellowship, the brothers were able to upgrade their computer and they went on to set world records in calculating Pi with 480 million, 1 billion, and 8 billion digits.