The late Kryzysztof Kieslowski of Poland directed and co-wrote in the early Nineties a film trilogy named after the three colors of the French flag—blue, white and red—which was intended to express something about the virtue-ideals represented by those colors.  Blue, dealing with liberty, was so atrocious I can’t believe any critic could like it, but of course there were critics who did, and if they liked that, they most certainly would like White, concerned with equality, which was better.  The only thing I liked about White was some of its humor; all else was ridiculous.  That a loser of a husband wants to show his thoughtless ex-wife that he can achieve equality of a kind with other men was a good premise, but how fatuously and awkwardly it was presented. 

Slightly more pleasing but still not acceptable is Red (1994), about the nicest virtue-ideal of them all:  fraternity.  Regarding this one I can at least say there is more than just one quality about it I like, but it is hardly cheering to see customary absurdity in plotting.  Red is even more effectively filmed than, and just as nonsensical as, White.

In what lies the fraternity?  Here is what I enjoy most about Red:  it lies in a friendship between a 20-odd-year-old female model and a 60-odd-year-old retired male judge, which friendship is just that—a friendship—there is nothing sexual about it.  They simply take an interest in one another, and rightly so from a cosmic perspective.  The model, you see, is destined to hook up with a man who completely resembles the judge when he was young, but this is the film’s biggest groaner.  Last I checked, life doesn’t work like that.

With his dignified face and quiet manner, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the judge, and with her friendly face and mature-young-lady manner, Irene Jacob plays the model; both are appealing.  So are the visuals, replete with shades of red never allowed to engulf the other colors, never too opulent.  And what suppleness in the directing!  Kieslowski was a middling artist, but in White and Red a remarkable moviemaker.

(In French with English subtitles)

Cover of Red (Three Colors Trilogy)

Derek Cianfrance, writer-director of the second-rate Blue Valentine, has a respectable film in The Place Beyond the Pines (2013).  The three-part chronicle proffers Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), a virile stunt motorcyclist who finds out the tiny son of ex-lover Romina (Eva Mendes) is his, and thus he longs to support the child.  Whence comes the money?  Luke starts acquiring it by robbing banks, but Robin, the pal who assists him, is alarmed at Luke’s inordinateness.  The cops don’t like it either:  A policeman named Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) goes after the robber.  As it turns out, Avery’s story has to do not just with Luke but also with Luke’s son, once he becomes a teenager, and with a bevy of corrupt cops.

The movie runs 2 hours and 20 minutes, and after more than half of that time is over, the script turns thoroughly schematic and relies too much on coincidence.  Yet it holds us, and is meaningful.  Cianfrance is an artist, one who doesn’t always make good choices, but an artist nonetheless.  There is a more skillful representation of people in this film than in Blue Valentine.  The story takes place in Schenectady, New York—in an America where people’s lives are regularly running off the rails.  They resort to crime and drug abuse and one-night stands that produce babies.  Hence it’s a running-off-the-rails that ought to lead to humility (to humble penitence), but often it is only the glaring error of an honorable man that leads to humility.  Such is the case with Avery.

Who will make up an honorable America in the future?

English: Ryan Gosling outside a concert for his band Dead Man’s Bones in Montreal, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To me, the family-friendly movie Life with Mikey (1993) is entertaining, primarily because Marc Lawrence’s script is studded with nifty one-liners handily uttered by Michael J. Fox and Nathan Lane.  

This is the one about an affable but lazy good-for-nothing (Fox) who used to be a popular kid TV star and now co-owns a talent agency for children.  His negligence toward the agency dissipates only upon his discovery of a brainy female scamp with claws, whom he wishes to turn into an actress.  For a while Lawrence makes this scamp, Angie, a liberal’s paragon of virtue, but happily the twaddle does not last.  Angie becomes a little more believable, even if there is no real substance to the film’s happy ending.  Fox’s life, after all, is supposed to be going “downhill.”

James Lapine directed and, although he did okay, he allowed Christine Vidal to play Angie mechanically.  The other child actors had a better sense of what to do and may have therefore needed little guidance.

Cover of Life with Mikey

What a blessing it is to be able to see a film such as Himalaya, set in Nepal’s Dolpo region, on the big screen.  Yes, it came to Tulsa in 2002—a fictional near-documentary made by Frenchman Eric Valli, a former National Geographic photographer and author.

The story is that of Tibetan herdsmen, and one woman and one child, leading groups of yaks through the Himalaya mountains with the objective of trading for food the salt those yaks are hauling.  The scenery is imposing, the mountains frightful in their size.  Soon we are accosted by a beautiful blue lake at the bottom of one of those mountains; one of the yaks plunges into it.  Thereafter winter sets in and the herdsmen endure the brutal power of a snowstorm destined to leave the Himalayas white.  And it does:  another exquisite sight.

Two cinematographers were employed here, and the look is smooth and un-garishly easy on the eye.  The snowy landscape under the sun does not shine too brightly for us, and yet we know, we can see, why it is too bright for the Tibetans.  That’s cinematography as it should be.  Valli backs away from too many closeups and, instead, lets us see nature dwarfing the herdsmen.  The music by Bruno Coulais is brusque and nicely ethnic, and Valli’s enjoyable cast is mostly nonprofessional.  They’re from Nepal’s Dolpo region.

Cover of Himalaya

The forgotten The Grissom Gang (1971) was directed by Robert Aldrich, maker of Kiss Me Deadly and The Dirty Dozen.  What could have been a decent crime flick-cum-1920s period piece lacks the finesse of the morally offensive Bonnie and Clyde, even if it has its stirring dramatic moments and a gripping denouement.  Based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, the film stars Kim Darby as a society girl kidnapped and held for ransom by a Barker-family simulacrum headed by Ma Grissom (Irene Dailey), mother of the likes of Slim Grissom (Scott Wilson), who begins to love the society girl.  Besides being clumsily directed and edited, the film is uneven in tone:  Levity arises only to be cast down by ugly bloodshed.  Grissom is would-be Peckinpah—and an odd duck to boot.

I’ll say this:  it isn’t at all boring.  Get a load of the actors.  Scott Wilson plays a repulsive character repulsively.  Miss Dailey is over-the-top and just plain odious.  Miss Darby, however, is excellent.  Often called upon to be emotional, she never simply huffs and puffs, never exaggerates.  She can be frantic but also moving, and is believable as an heiress.  Fine, too, are down-to-earth Robert Lansing and handsome, intimidating Tony Musante.  Why, though, did all the actors have to be coated with perspiration under the klieg lights?  Every time there is a closeup we see this perspiration.  It is yet another thing that demonstrates the film’s slipshod execution.  I’m glad The Grissom Gang is on DVD but only because of Miss Darby’s performance.

Cover via Amazon