MYSTERIES OF LISBON (MISTÉRIOS DE LISBOA) (2011)

This sumptuous period film from the late Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz creates the cinematic equivalent of a Japanese puzzle box merged with a Russian nesting doll -- stories layered within stories that lead to other stories.  The outer story is told by an adult Pedro da Silva (Afonso Pimentel), whom we first meet as a 14-year old boy named João (João Luis Arrais) living in a Portuguese orphanage run by enigmatic Padre Dinis (Adriano Luz).  After suffering a blow to the head, João spends a delirious night during which he believes he was visited by his mother.  With reluctance the padre agrees to tell the boy the truth about his heritage and takes up the story.  We learn of the passion of Angela de Lima (Maria João Bastos) and Don Pedro da Silva (João Baptista).  Their forbidden love leaves him dead and her with child (our João) -- and forcefully betrothed to the ill-mannered Count of Santa Barbara (Albano Jeronimo).  Angela’s father, the Marques de Montezelos (Rui Morrison), hires a thug to dispose of the illegitimate baby, but Padre Dinis (in disguise) pays off the killer in order to hide the child at the orphanage.  The stories continue to branch off as we learn of the padre’s past, leading us to the story of vengeful Elise de Montfort (Clotilde Hesme), leading us to the mysterious and dangerous Alberto de Magalhães (Ricardo Pereira), who has hidden ties to João and his mother.  Carlos Saboga’s sprawling adaptation of Camilo Castelo Branco’s book relishes the details, and André Szankowski’s fluid cinematography follows the leisurely-paced action.  Director Ruiz captures many of his scenes in one continuous, rapturous take as the characters move in and out of the frame or are followed from room to room by the restless camera.  With its hypnotic pace and muted melodrama, the film positions its audience as a sleepwalker or a dreamer, watching the action but never fully involved.  The filmmakers clearly love a long story, and so should the film’s audience.  Clocking in at nearly 4½ hours (with subtitles), this gorgeous tribute to the art of storytelling can tax the patience.  But those with the stamina will be rewarded in a tale well told.

THE ARTIST (2011)

In 1927 silent movie actor George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) has reached his zenith.  He’s beloved by fans for his charm and by studio boss Al Zimmer (a perfectly cast John Goodman) for his marquee value.  Aspiring actress Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) stumbles onto a photo opportunity with Valentin and secures an extra position on the star’s next film, which fails to please his wife, Doris (Penelope Ann Miller).  But the movie business is about to change with the advent of sound.  Valentin adamantly refuses to make a talking picture and leaves the studio to produce and star in his next silent vehicle.  Meanwhile Peppy works her way up the cast tier and by embracing the new medium becomes a rising star.  As fate would have it the latest films of each open on the same day, with disastrous results for Valentin and instant stardom for Peppy.  The former star’s world collapses.  His wife leaves him, and only his chauffer (James Cromwell) and loyal dog (Uggie) remain.  After browbeating Zimmer with her freshly attained clout, Peppy proposes Valentin accept a role opposite her.  But the prideful Valentin refuses her charity and begins his downward spiral.  Shot in gorgeous black-and-white by Guillaume Schiffman, writer/director Michel Hazanavicius’ mostly silent film succeeds as a loving re-creation of the era.  His sharp, economic visual style and the expressive performances of his exquisite cast minimize the need for title cards.  Dujardin exudes the requisite charisma and finds moments of vulnerability beneath the façade.  Likewise Bejo hits all the right silent notes as a star who doesn’t forget her roots.  For the film’s first hour Hazanavicius fires on all cylinders, reveling in the nostalgic conceits of the period, and concocts a dream sequence that captures the film’s heart and soul.  But it misfires when the light tone turns tragic and Ludovic Bource’s quirky score becomes subsumed by that of Bernard Herrmann’s VERTIGO.  Valentin’s transformation into a self-pitying and self-destructive wretch diminishes his appeal nearly past caring.  But the film’s final scene brings us back from the abyss with an exuberant, redemptive dance number.

A SEPARATION (2011)

Writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s riveting Iranian melodrama opens with husband Nader (Peyman Moadi) and wife Simin (Leila Hatami) pleading their case to an unseen judge (from whose point of view we watch the entire scene).  Simin has filed for divorce because she believes the family should move abroad to provide more opportunities for daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) and Nader refuses because he must care for his elderly father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.  The two snipe at each other, childish in their respective intransigence, so we commiserate with the judge when he dismisses the case due to a lack of seriousness.  Simin moves out, so Nader hires Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to care for his father.  Razieh, a devout Muslim and four months pregnant, needs the job to help her hotheaded husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) pay his debts.  Nader and Termeh arrive home one afternoon to find the old man tied to his bed and money missing, so Nader presumes the worst.  Razieh returns and vehemently denies that she stole, but Nader throws her out.  She collapses on the stairway and lands in hospital.  After Razieh miscarries, legal recriminations fly, throwing both households into further turmoil.  Farhadi elicits uniformly strong performances from his exceptional cast, and his generous script remains empathetic while refusing to excuse.  As we come to identify with a character Farhadi upends our expectations, and we question our allegiance.  His scenes feel messy, random, true to life.  We are never quite sure where the film is going and subsequently never feel settled.  By the time the film reaches its heartbreaking conclusion, however, Farhadi’s method becomes apparent.  We are back in the judge’s chamber from the first scene, and we no longer find the situation lacking in seriousness.  The overlooked Termeh provides our point of view now.  The stunning final shot matches the first.  In it Nader and Simin sit facing but not looking at each other.  This time they are silent.  Farhadi’s film about the ties that bind and unravel is a compassionate wonder.

THE IDES OF MARCH (2011)

George Clooney’s latest directorial effort plunges its audience into a fierce battle for the Democratic presidential nomination during the lead up to the Ohio primary.  While Governor Mike Morris (Clooney) and his rival Senator Pullman (Michael Mantell) spar, Morris’ campaign manager Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his right hand man Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) work behind the scenes to shore up the pledged delegates of sanctimonious South Carolina Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright), which could all but sow up the nomination.  Though Meyers believes in and idealizes Morris’ policy goals, he’s a pragmatist in the mechanics of electoral politics.  At an off-the-record meeting with Pullman’s campaign manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), Meyers is made to doubt the Morris/Thompson alliance and is offered a chance to switch teams.  The rising star demurs.  Meanwhile Meyers has been having a fling with young intern Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood) but discovers that she had a carnal encounter with the Governor that left her in a predicament.  The script by Clooney & Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon, based on Willimon’s play “Farragut North”, works best when it focuses on election strategy and back door machinations.  There the writing and directing feel honest and on sure footing.  The film stumbles when it introduces the promiscuous intern and unfaithful politician storyline, which quickly devolves into credulity-straining melodrama.  Wood suffers for this, wasting her affecting work on a thinly written role.  Hoffman and Giamatti provide solid support but are shunted to the film’s edges, and Clooney seems curiously disengaged.  While Gosling’s natural charm serves his character well, the script tells us that Meyers is both a dreamer and shrewd political player.  Yet he is duped too often to be convincing as a savvy campaign manager, and he compromises his ideals too readily to make a believable idealist.  We have no clear idea of who Meyers is, which proves to be the film’s central problem.  And while that may be the point, it makes for an unsatisfying movie.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (2011)

This terrific new adaptation of John le Carré’s classic novel immerses the viewer in a palpable Cold War paranoia of the early 1970s yet attains a vibrant immediacy that precludes its delegation to the nostalgia archive.  After a botched operation that takes down agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) British Intelligence head Control (John Hurt) is asked to leave the Circus (as the agency is known) along with protégé George Smiley (Gary Oldman).  But government minister Oliver Lacon (Simon McBurney) coaxes the forcibly retired protégé into investigating the possibility that there’s a mole (double-agent) at the top of the Circus.  The list of suspects consists of the organization’s current leadership – current head Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik).  Smiley enlists the help of junior agent Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose rogue agent Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) claims to have a contact that can identify the Soviet mole.  Screenwriters Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan distil le Carré’s labyrinthine plot without the need to spoon-feed.  More importantly, they find the film’s dramatic key, as any reputable spy would, by locating and exploiting the characters’ blind spots to brilliant effect.  Hoyte Van Hoytema’s subtle cinematography follows this lead with a classical approach, using slow pans for the important reveals.  Maria Djurkovic’s sharply conceived production design captures the look of the period but never feels like a museum piece.  Composer Alberto Iglesias and music supervisor Nick Angel bookend the film with surprising choices that feel just right.  The ensemble of first-rate character actors is impeccable, from the muted Oldman to the live wire Hardy to the charming Firth to the endearing Cumberbatch.  Tomas Alfredson’s directorial alchemy brings all these elements together cohesively and matches the design with a pace and tone that harkens back to a bygone era.  This emotionally and intellectually satisfying film draws favorable comparison to Arthur Penn and Francis Ford Coppola in their heyday and heralds an exciting new directing talent.

MARGIN CALL (2011)

The audience first glimpses Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) in the immediate aftermath of a downsizing bloodbath at the investment firm where he currently manages the now-decimated sales team.  He’s slumped at his desk on the verge of tears because his dog is dying.  At the prompting of subordinate Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) Rogers gives a vacuous pep talk to the survivors, among them risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) and junior analyst Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley).  Their immediate supervisor, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), was not so lucky.  Before being escorted out of the building, however, the risk manager hands Peter an unfinished project and admonishes the young man to be careful.  After work hours, while his team carouses at a club, Peter finishes the project but sees a disturbing trend in the matrix.  He calls Seth at the bar to urge Will (now his supervisor) back to the office.  Will calls in Sam, who calls in Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore) and Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), who, despite the early hour, calls the firm’s head John Tuld (Jeremy Irons), who calls an emergency senior management meeting.  The market’s current volatility, Peter explains, has caused the firm’s extensive mortgage-backed securities portfolio to lose its value.  Unless you’ve lived under a rock since 2008, you will recognize that writer/director J.C. Chandor loosely based his fictional firm on Lehman Brothers, the failure of which led to the financial market crash, followed by international economic devastation.  This efficient boardroom thriller is less interested in the outcome (we know how it ends) than in the thought process and decision-making that leads to it.  The appealing Quinto draws us into this alien world of self-serving, ethically challenged characters, and the stellar ensemble serves the material well, especially the vampirish Irons and the versatile Bettany, who uncovers fascinating layers without succumbing to likability.  Chandor’s spare dialogue streamlines the action nicely, but his otherwise sharp script tries too hard (as does Spacey) to give Sam moral absolution.

THE HELP (2011)

Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling book becomes a highly anticipated feature film which falters in its feel-good approach to a troubled period in history.  I have not read the novel, but I have reasonable assurance from one who has that writer/director Tate Taylor’s adaptation is a faithful one.  In pre-civil rights Mississippi recent college graduate Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone) returns to Jackson to pursue a career as a writer.  Her newfound political awareness leads to friction with her peers, particularly Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), a proponent of segregation who fires her maid Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) for using the family commode.  Minny plots her revenge in part by going to work for Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), a housewife shut out of Hilly’s social gatherings.  While working at the local newspaper Skeeter pitches to publisher Elain Stein (Mary Steenburgen) her idea for a book written from the perspective of the black women who care for well-to-do families in the South.  Persuading the help (as these women are called) to grant interviews becomes Skeeter’s biggest challenge.  With reluctance Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) agrees, to the initial consternation, and eventual cooperation, of her fellow domestics.  Davis gives a subtle and nuanced performance, but her character may as well wear a halo.  Chastain charms as the guileless Celia, and her chemistry with Spencer’s brassy Minny provides what spark the film has.  Yet neither overcomes the simplistic writing.  Stone is strangely subdued, while Howard gamely attacks her one-note character with gusto.  The early 1960s were a volatile time filled with societal upheaval.  Yet Taylor’s film feels too tidy for its time.  Although the violent deaths of Medgar Evers (an outspoken black civil rights activist) and John F. Kennedy get their mention, the events’ societal shock waves get relegated to the periphery.  Taylor’s film (and, I suspect, Stockett’s novel) are eager for the audience to congratulate itself on how far race relations have come (and they have).  But to have that self-satisfaction permeate a film set predominately in 1963 Mississippi strikes a frustratingly false note.