THE RISE OF SKYWALKER Says Goodbye To STAR WARS For Now

Now playing at every multiplex from here to a galaxy far, far away:

STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

(Dir. J.J. Abrams, 2019)

So, here we are. The highly anticipated ninth episode of the Skywalker saga is here and it’s a chaotically overblown piece of pure spectacle. By the end of its two hour and 21 minute running time, I was too worn out to judge whether it was a satisfying conclusion to the series that started back in 1977, so I’ll try to hash that out here. 

This last time deals with the battle between the Rebels and The Empire – sorry, that’s the Resistance and The First Order. Darth Vader wannabe Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) discovers that dark lord, Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), last seen being thrown into the Death Star’s reactor by Vader in RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983), is still alive and has assembled a massive fleet of Star Destroyers. 

After conferring with General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher in footage mostly cut from THE FORCE AWAKENS), our heroes Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), and the droids C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), and the roly-poly cutie BB-8, set out to find a McGuffin, a Sith Dagger to be exact, that will possibly lead them to Palpatine. There is also another McGuffin, a Sith Wayfinder – a small pyramid shaped compass that also may lead them to the former Emperor of the Galaxy. I think. 

Amid these plot points are bombastic light saber duels between Kylo Ren and Rey, who still have the Force connection going for them, as well as some sexual friction; blaster-fire aplenty, and a ginormous space battle that is like the similar finales of STAR WARS and RETURN OF THE JEDI times a hundred. 

I didn’t mind the obvious bits of fan service as it was fun to see Billy Dee Williams reprising Lando Calrissian, or Chewie cheating at holochess, Wedge, Ewoks, Jawas, and a few surprise cameos, but when it comes to Palpatine – is he really enough of a fan favorite to resurrect? I like McDiarmid, but it seems they couldn’t come up with a good enough villain and had to reach back 30 years for one. 

Director Abrams, who co-wrote the screenplay with Chris Terrio, has fashioned a spectacle-filled behemoth that equally overwhelmed and underwhelmed me – sometimes at the same time. Just as many times as I got thrilled with how they were recreating the STAR WARS from my youth, I got bored at how they were recreating the STAR WARS of my youth. 

I grew up with the original trilogy (1977-1983), then pretended the prequels (1999-2005) didn’t exist, but came back into the fold with THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015) which captured the old vibe. I liked the followup, THE LAST JEDI (2017), more than most fans but will concede that its flaws are hard to ignore.

I enjoyed RISE OF SKYWALKER quite a bit, but I’m feeling fatigue from the whole damn series. I’ll still watch The Mandalorian (love Baby Yoda!), but after this exhausting and sometimes incoherent entry, I hope they take a long break between RISE and another STAR WARS movie. 

I feel that I, and the hoards of over-critical fans, deserve it.

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For The First Time Since 1983, STAR WARS Is Really Back

Opening tomorrow at every multiplex in the galaxy:

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

(Dir. J.J. Abrams, 2015)

As suspected, J.J. Abrams is much, much better suited for STAR WARS than STAR TREK.

Abrams’ TREK movies were poppy, new fangled approximations of the Star Trek ethos, but his highly anticipated seventh entry in the ultra popular space saga, THE FORCE AWAKENS, really is a bonafide, honest-to-God, gloriously old school STAR WARS movie.

It captures the spirit and replicates the story beats of the original 1977 film so lovingly that it is almost a virtual remake, but that back-to-basics approach hugely works in its favor because, unlike the awful prequels, it’s not cluttered and all over the place.

Now, in order to keep from revealing major spoilers – the kind that would keep people from reading reviews like this in the first place – I’ll try to be as vague as I can with plot points, and other juicy tidbits.

It’s 30 years after the events in RETURN OF THE JEDI, and instead of the Empire and the Rebel Alliance we now have “The First Order,” and “The Resistance.” Darth Vader’s successor, clothed in similar black attire with metal mask and cape, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), is, of course, trying to crush The Resistance and find Luke Skywalker who’s gone missing.

On a desert planet that highly resembles Tatooine, but is called Jakku, we meet a scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley) who befriends BB-8, that cute orange and white spinning droid you’ve probably seen in trailers and TV teasers, who is being hunted by The First Order because he’s carrying a secret message to be delivered to The Resistance. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, John Boyega (ATTACK THE BLOCK) plays a storm trooper who defects and joins forces with Rey, under the guise that he’s in The Resistance. Fleeing from The First Order, Rey, Finn, and BB-8 happen upon The Millenium Falcon in a space ship junkyard, and luckily it still holds together for their escape.

Before long the Falcon is captured by a large freighter owned by famed smuggler, and rebel hero Han Solo (Harrison Ford in his most invested performance in eons) and that beloved hairy Wookie, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), who, unlike Han, hasn’t aged a day.

That’s as much of the plot as I need to go into. You can most likely guess that there is a new Death Star (Starkiller Base) to destroy, a cantina-like scene, light saber battles, X-Wings and Tie Fighter dogfights, and revelations about who’s related to whom.

Carrie Fisher reprises her role as Leia Organa, now a General, with Anthony Daniels back as C-3PO, and Kenny Baker back inside R2-D2, but he hasn’t been the same since Master Luke vanished. 

The new kids, Boyega and Ridley, have great gusto and likable pluck in their roles and are a lot of fun to watch run around through battle station corridors, Endor-like forests, and snowy Hoth-type terrain. It's like they split the role of Luke into the two characters, who both long for better destinies before getting swooped up into the galactic battle between good and evil.

As for Luke, we all know that Mark Hamill has signed back on, but going into how he appears would be ultra spoilery so I won't go there.

As for the other new characters, Oscar Isaac, who gets some wise-cracks in (he also appears to be having more fun than I've ever seen him have in a movie), plays Poe Dameron, an ace X-Wing fighter pilot for The Resistance; a stern Domhnall Gleeson (Isaac’s EX MACHINA co-star) plays the evil First Order General Hux, Lupita Nyong’o plays the motion capture-enhanced alien pirate/bar owner Maz Kanata (sort of the movie’s Yoda), and Andy Serkis lends his distinctive talents to embodying the sinister Supreme Leader Snoke (another motion-capture creation), the new Emperor-esque figure.

And who knew that Driver, best known as Lena Dunham's weird, lanky boyfriend on the HBO show Girls, would make such a great STAR WARS villain? He nails the intensity needed for Kylo Ren, and gives him just the right amount of ache as well.

It’s also nice that their dialogue, written by Abrams, Michael Arndt (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, TOY STORY 3), and returning series scribe Lawrence Kasdan, is sharp and witty with just the right amount of call backs. This is especially notable in Han and Leia’s scenes, though I wish they fought a little, with that old Tracy/Hepburn-ish back and forth so memorable in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Fisher, who had to slim down to reprise the part, brings gravitas in the form of her older, dignified Leia, but they could've given her a little more to do. However, that's a small complaint considering.

George Lucas may have created STAR WARS, but somewhere along the line he lost its vision. Abrams sure found it here, as one of the best things that I can report is that while watching THE FORCE AWAKENS, I really did forget about the prequels. Abrams’ film is so immensely entranced with the look, feel, and tone of the original trilogy that all that nonsense about senate treaties, midichlorians, Qui-Gon Jinn, Palpatine, etc. never comes to mind. It’s remarkable how successful it is in rendering Episodes I-III non-canon.

Sure, there's lots of CGI, but little of the aforementioned clutter of the prequels or many recent sci-fi action films. I really appreciate that Abrams had real sets and models built, and relied on practical effects when possible. David Mindel's cinematography lovingly apes the look of the original trilogy, as John Williams reworks all the mighty musical cues of his previous series' scores effectively. 

As a rekindling of the magic of the space opera that I loved as a kid, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is a fantastic success. Abrams really pulled off a wonderful, faithful, funny, and intoxicatingly fun entry that had me from the first line of the opening crawl to its powerful last shot. For the first time since 1983, STAR WARS is really back.

When Han says “Chewie, we’re home,” he might as well be speaking for the masses that are going to eat this up, and go back again and again for more.

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The Chillingly Brilliant EX MACHINA Out This Week on Blu Ray/DVD

EX MACHINA

(Dir. Alex Garland, 2015)

It’s time to take a break from all the summer sequels and highly hyped blockbuster wannabes clogging up the multiplexes, and take note that one of the best films of the year, Alex Garland’s sleek, dark sci-fi thriller EX MACHINA drops this week on Blu ray and DVD. Despite critical acclaim, it quietly came and went in theaters early this year, but I bet it’ll build its deserved audience quickly on home video.

Domhnall Gleeson (HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PARTS I & II, ABOUT TIME, FRANK) plays Caleb Smith, a programmer at the Google-esque internet search engine giant Bluebook, who wins first prize in a companywide lottery. This entitles Caleb to a week’s stay at the home of the company’s reclusive CEO, located on his vast mountain estate (location never specified, but filmed in Norway).

In another solidly intense performance, Oscar Isaac (head shaved, but sporting a bushy beard) portrays the CEO, Nathan Bateman, who tells Caleb in their first meeting that his impressive compound of glass, stone, and shiny surfaces isn’t a house, it’s a research facility. After he gets him to sign a non disclosure form, Nathan reveals to Caleb that he’s built an android with Artificial Intelligence and that he wants Caleb to be the human component in the Turing Test - “when a human interacts with a computer, and if the human doesn’t know they’re interacting with a computer – the test is passed.”

Caleb is introduced to the AI, Ava (Alicia Vikander), who via CGI has parts that are transparent, and their sessions begin. Caleb speaks to Ava through a glass wall of an observation room, and, of course, develops an attraction to her. Nathan monitors their conversations on surveillance cameras, but during a power outage (something that happens often, Nathan explains) Ava warns Caleb that “Nathan is not your friend.”

There are other red flags that Nathan, who’s constantly boozing it up, is a modernized version of the classic mad scientist character –he’s hacked into the cell phones of billions, the contest was a smokescreen for this experiment, there is footage of other AI models desperately (and destructively) trying to escape , and he may have programmed Ava to flirt with Caleb.

There is only one other cast member - Kyoko, a Japanese housemaid (Sonoya Mizuno) who speaks no English but definitely has some dance moves as we see when a yet again drunken Nathan tries to get a party going with she and Caleb.

The directorial debut of screenwriter Alex Garland (28 DAYS LATER, NEVER LET ME GO, and DREDD) EX MACHINA is sharply constructed – there’s not a misplaced line, shot, or story beat and Geoff Barrow and Glenn Salisbury’s eerie electronic score effectively connects it all together.

Gleeson’s role is similar to his part in FRANK – a smart ambitious guy who gets way in over his head trying to be a part of something grand – but his acting is more focused here. His nervous exchanges, playing off of Isaac’s rich genius cockiness, give the film its humanity. However it’s the kind of humanity that may seal our race’s doom. 

It's easy to see why Gleeson's Caleb would fall for Vikander's alluring Ava, even when he's trying to keep in mind that she's a machine, albeit sentient. Vikander tops off the trio of terrific performances, and makes the viewer go through their own personal take on the Turing Test as well.

It builds brilliantly from an intriguing think piece into a thriller, that’s both psychological and technological, with an ending that floored me then stuck around to haunt me for days. This is cerebral film making of the highest order – Stanley Kubrick, who Isaac says in one of the bonus features that he patterned his character after, would’ve loved it.

Special Features: The 5-Part Featurette “Through the Looking Glass: Creating EX MACHINA,” 8 Behind-the-Scenes vignettes, and SXSW Q & A with cast and crew that's intermittently interesting if you've got an hour to kill.

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A MOST VIOLENT YEAR: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at an indie art house near me (and a few multiplexes):

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR

(Dir. J.C. Chandor, 2014)

The poster picture for this movie lists actors Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in succession with the description “New York City, 1981.” That seems to suggest that New York City, circa ’81 is as much a star of the movie of those two leads. But really it’s just the NYC skyline, with the World Trade Center’s twin towers present in many shots, that counts as a principle player here.

Isaac commands the screen with cool, cunning confidence as Abel Morales, a Columbian immigrant who’s looking to close a major waterfront land deal (that happens to have an amazing view of Manhattan) so he can expand his heating oil company. 

With his delicately coiffed hair, Armani suits, cashmere camel coat, and cultivated demeanor, Isaac channels GODFATHER PART II-era Al Pacino. Close-ups of Isaac even brought to my mind Mort Drucker’s caricatures of Pacino in old ‘70s issues of Mad Magazine.

But Isaac’s Abel is like if Pacino’s Michael Corleone actually meant it when he told his wife he wanted the family business to be completely legitimate. “I've spent my whole life trying not to become a gangster,” Abel tells his wife Anna, sharply played by Jessica Chastain, dressed in chic ‘80s fashions.

Abel believes in the American dream, but Anna, the daughter of a local mob boss, has a more lived-in cynical perspective, especially since recent events involving their trucks getting hijacked by unknown rivals, and a smooth district attorney (David Oyelowo, in quite a distinctly different persona than MLK Jr. in SELMA) building a case to charge them for white-collar tax fraud, have placed their deal in jeopardy.

Because of the violent hijackings, one of which put a young driver (Elyes Gabel) in the hospital, a Teamster rep (Peter Gerety) tells Abel to arm his employees but he refuses, saying that it “would be the end of everything we worked for. If one of these guys shoots someone, they will bring me down for it.”

Abel also refuses to live in a fortress with guards, even after he chases off a man with a gun lurking outside his new palatial mansion in the suburbs of Westchester.

Albert Brooks, who, like in his Oscar-nominated part in DRIVE (which also featured Isaac), is again playing against type, this time with a wig of thin blonde hair as Abel’s wise lawyer and confidant. Except for a couple of well-worded scenes, notably one in which he asks Isaac: “Why do you want this so badly?”, Brooks isn’t given a lot to do, but his presence is still seriously appreciated.

The pressure is on as time is running out for Abel to raise the needed cash, and find out who’s behind the hijackings, but Abel keeps his cool. That is until he personally involves himself, chasing down one of the hijacking thugs and trying to beat out of them who they work for.

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, which is only intermittently violent, doesn’t much resemble writer/director J.C. Chandor’s previous films - the financial cliffhanger MARGIN CALL, and the Robert Redford lost at sea drama ALL IS LOST - except in being about practical-minded people trying to survive. Just three films in, Chandor is already building an impressive filmography, one that’s steeped in styles learned from the masters, yet tempered by his own edgy vision.

While Chandor layers his film with echoes of Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Sidney Lumet, and Martin Scorsese, the cinematography of Bradford Young, who also shot SELMA, brings to mind the darkness of the late, great Gordon Willis’ camerawork. The spare lighting adds shadowy nuance to the proceedings, particularly in a scene involving the meeting of the oil company heads around a table in the back of an Italian restaurant (yes, another GODFATHER-ish bit).

Sadly this excellent, moody, impeccably acted film was overlooked Oscar nomination-wise. For her tough, take-no-shit, New Jersey-accented performance, I thought Chastain would get one for sure. When she takes charge, like when she shoots a deer that they hit with their car because Isaac was hesitating to kill it with a crowbar or when she calls her husband a “pussy,” she’s completely convincing as a woman who’s been around and knows the real stakes.

But Isaac is the true owner of the film. A simple closing of his eyes in disappointment conveys volumes, and his determination to gain more power and control (witness the aforementioned war council scene) without losing his dignity provides the foundation for Isaac’s finest acting yet. Despite his headlining the Coen brothers’ INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and a bunch of other choice roles, Isaac isn’t a household name yet, but while roles in STAR WARS and X-MEN sequels may change that in the next year, this film is the one that really deserves to be his breakthrough.

The film strains to emphasize that this guy is a better, more moral minded man than Michael Corleone, but as much as he feels that he’s immune from corruption, it’s a necessary evil with which he must compromise.

So many New York movies set in the same period shy away from showing the WTC towers in the skyline, but here they are always present – often out of focus, way off in the background, but always present. Chandor’s film doesn’t have to spell out what they represent in Abel’s quest for success in a harsh, dangerous economy; one can feel it every time they are glimpsed.

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The Laughably Bad Victorian-Era Romantic Thriller IN SECRET

Now playing at an art house near you, in my case the Colony Theater in Raleigh:

IN SECRET (Dir. Charlie Stratton, 2013)

Charlie Stratton’s adaptation of Neal Bell’s stage play, which was based on the 1867 novel “Therese Racquin” by Émile Zola, is such an overwrought exercise with simplistic soap opera dialogue that it sometimes plays like a parody of an Victorian era romantic thriller. A very bad parody, that is.

Set in France in the 1860s, the story sets up Elizabeth Olsen as a woman trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage to a sickly Tom Felton (best known as Draco Malfoy in the HARRY POTTER films), that was arranged by Jessica Lange as Malfoy’s, I mean Felton’s cold evil-eyed mother. Lange is also Olsen’s aunt so there’s that.

I’ve often thought that Lange sometimes brings a mental instability to characters that don’t necessarily call for it, but this one sure does. The power she wields over Olsen is unexplained as I kept wondering why doesn’t the girl just run away when told she has to marry Felton? Olsen in an aside says she didn’t think she had the strength to make it on her own, but I’m not buying it.

Shortly after the couple and matriarch Lange move to Paris to open up a some sort of fabric shop (that never has any customers), while Felton works in an office, Oscar Isaac (currently starring as the title character in the Coen brothers’ INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS) pops up as a childhood friend of Felton’s. Isaac is a suave charming aspiring artist who Olsen falls madly in love with in a series of overly artsy soft focus sex scenes (one even has the light through a window glaring on the lens). Imagine gruff movie trailer announcer’s voice: “The love they had could only be shared…In Secret.”

Because of the times or whatever, Olsen and Isaac can’t just run away together so the word “accident” comes up regarding Felton, which is a shame because he’s the only one here with the appropriate accent. The three go on a boat trip that ends in murder as Isaac drowns Felton. We don’t see this happen except for fleeting flashbacks later in the film, but we get what happened when Olsen and Isaac come back wet and screaming, claiming that Felton was standing, dancing I think, and tipped the boat over. 

Not sure why they felt it was necessary to show us a ghastly shot of Felton's corpse - it creeped me out more than it did Isaac when he went to the morgue to identify the body.

The lovers have to wait to get together or else they’ll be suspected for murder, and guess what, the heat has died off for some reason. The plotting gets more and more ludicrous in the last third, with Lange developing some disease that causes her to lose her voice so she’s unable to point out to anyone that Olsen and Isaac murdered her son. Lange even goes to the length to spell it out in messy ink on the store’s floor.

The swelling strings of Gabriel Yared's (THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, COLD MOUNTAIN) score try to intensify the events but come off as laughably bad as everything else.

When I’m watching a film that I know is an adaptation of a book I haven’t read, I sometimes find myself thinking ‘oh, this is probably a lot more compelling or plausible on the page.’ I thought that a lot during this film, but folks who’ve read the original novel may get a lot more out of it than me - I'm fairly certain Zola's text wasn't the trashy romance novel that this film makes it look like.

Stratton's full length feature directorial debut, IN SECRET is a dreadful melodrama, that wastes the energy of talented actors (for some reason they cast Mackenzie Crook, best known as Gareth from The Office UK, to just stand around and make obvious observations), while its contrivances waste the time of the audience. For sure, one of the first of the worst movies of the year.

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Musings On The Music In The Coen Brothers’ Movies: Part III

Ethan Coen, T. Bone Burnett, and Joel Coen share a laugh in the recording studio during the sessions for INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS.

The Coen brothers’ newest film, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS is one of their most musically minded movies so I’ve been taking a chronological look back at the songs and scores of the soundtracks throughout their fine filmography.

Part I covered BLOOD SIMPLE through FARGO: PART I: From the Dark Debut to the Snowblind Breakthrough (1984-1996).

Part II covered THE BIG LEBOWSKI through NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: PART II: From a Movie Mix-tape Made By The Dude to a Muted De-Countrified Terrain With Some Soggy Mountain Boys Songs on the Side (1998-2007).

This update will carry us through BURN AFTER READING to their latest film which is now playing at an indie art house near you

Part III: From a Star Studded Spy-style Lark to a Dark Folksinging Farce (2008-2013)

The Coen brother’s follow-up to their Oscar-winning new fangled Western NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was a lowbrow lark with a highbrow cast and production values: 2008’s BURN AFTER READING. George Clooney (returning for his third film with the brothers), Frances McDormond (her sixth), Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Richard Jenkins, and Tilda Swinton find themselves caught up in a kooky Washington D.C.-set caper involving some not so intelligent members of the intelligence community.

Composer Carter Burwell, returning for his 12th film with the Coens, was called upon by Joel Coen to provide a score that’s “something big and bombastic, something important sounding but absolutely meaningless.” In a 2008 interview with Filmfocus.com, Burwell commented:

“I liked the idea that the composer is as deluded as the characters so that his soundtrack fits the movie the characters think they are in, rather than the actual film we are watching.”

The effect works wonders with the film’s dark thriller aesthetics right from the opening percussion-enhanced get-go in the Google Earth-esque credits opening (aptly named “Earth Zoom (In)” on the film’s issued soundtrack. (There's a “Earth Zoom (Out)” at the end too).
 
After the minimal music accompaniment in NO COUNTRY, BURN AFTER READING gave us a full wall-to-wall Burwell score that was singled out by many critics including Wendy Ide from The Times who wrote: “Carter Burwell’s brilliant score is the most paranoid piece of film music since Quincy Jones’s neurotic soundtrack for THE ANDERSON TAPES - it’s particularly well-judged as it brings a gravity to a collection of characters who we could otherwise dismiss as numbskulls and nincompoops.”

Burwell (again in Filmfocus.com) though had a different film in mind for inspiration: “What I was referencing was [the score for] SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, which is almost entirely percussion and has lots of snare drums and marching sounds. But the [percussion in the BURN AFTER READING] score wasn’t about the military but instead a sense of grandiosity.”

Despite good reviews and respectable box office, BURN AFTER READING has sort of faded away in the years since its release. Re-watching it for this piece I found that it holds up nicely. Sure, it can seem like a throwaway – i.e. the Coens taking a silly breather between bigger statements - but with the amusing actions of its A-list cast and Burwell’s satirically over serious score I think it’s definitely a keeper.

Burwell and the brothers, Coen, re-united the following year for A SERIOUS MAN, an even darker comedy that focused on the trials and tribulations of a Minnesotan physics professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) in the late ‘60s.

Autobiographical elements from the Coen brothers’ Jewish upbringing were obviously in the mix. The inclusion of three Jefferson Airplane songs on the soundtrack leads me to believe one of the brothers got stoned at their bar mitzvah just like Gobnik’s son (Aaron Wolff) does in one of the film’s best scenes.

Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love” appears, as I wrote in my original review of the film, as “a driving force throughout the movie.” Firstly, when the credits slowly start to hit the screen after the odd Yiddish-language opening scene, Burwell’s Stomp-style percussion segues into the 1967 Jefferson Airplane classic. Then we see Wolff listening to the song on his portable transistor radio earplug while sitting in his classroom. The song gets broadcast to the rest of the class when the kid’s instructor angrily yanks the earplug out while confiscating the radio.

Burwell discussed this with movingimagesource.us: “The idea was that during this transition from the shtetl to the Jefferson Airplane, you're traveling through the ear canal of this boy in Hebrew school. It’s a dark and mysterious tunnel, and when you finally get to the end it turns out that it’s the earpiece of his portable radio through which he's listening to Jefferson Airplane. That was the first piece of music I wrote for the film.”

Burwell also said of the film: “The script had specific musical references: Jefferson Airplane, F Troop, Sidor Belarsky. Belarsky was a Jewish opera singer who also made some Yiddish records, and there's one Yiddish song that [the Coens] just loved. These songs were in the script, and that was basically what I had to go on at first. Joel and Ethan had no suggestion about what the score should be. They just said, ‘Well, this is what you've got. You've got Jefferson Airplane and F Troop and Sidor Belarsky.’”’

A SERIOUS MAN’S soundtrack features 20 tracks - the aforementioned Jefferson Airplane song “Somebody To Love” along with the San Francisco band’s “Comin’ Back To Me” and “Today” join 17 tracks of Burwell’s scorings, mostly made up of spare harp, strings, and piano stylings.

While his son listens to Jefferson Airplane, Stuhlbarg’s put-upon professor puts Sidor Belarsky on the family parlophone in his downtime. Much of the film concerns Stuhlbarg trying to get in to see the rabbi emeritus, the famous Marshak in order to obtain some wisdom, but it’s his son Wolff who gets a sit-down with the senior rabbi (Alan Mandell) after the blitzed boy’s bar mitzvah. After some well measured silence, the rabbi slowly intones: “When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies…” Yep, the opening couplet from “Somebody To Love.”

The rabbi then says “Then what? Grace Slick, Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jorma-something. These are the members of the Airplane!” The rabbi gives back the boy’s transistor radio and concludes: “Be a good boy.” Seems like the Coens are saying that the lyrics of a rock song hold just about as much meaning as any religious dogma does. Or something.

For TRUE GRIT, the Coen brothers’ 2010 adaptation of the novel not a remake of the 1969 John Wayne movie, Burwell explained to Variety that for the tale of a 14-year-old girl bent on avenging her father’s murder in the Old West: “I thought that hymns, or music that sounded like hymns, would remind you that what’s driving the whole story is a biblical sense of righteousness.”

“19th Century church music” was another way Burwell put it in the same interview, and that’s what’s all over TRUE GRIT especially in the 1888 hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” which accounts for a fourth of the score. Iris Dement’s version of the song that accompanies the end credits isn’t available on the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD, but it’s available on the iTunes version of the release.

Other old timey hymns referenced in the orchestral score are “The Glory-Land Way” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” “Hold to God's Unchanging Hand,” and “Talk About Suffering.”

Of course, because the hymns are considered pre-composed music, the movie didn’t get any Oscar nomination action for its score but it did get nominated for just about everything else (Jeff Bridges’ great grizzled turn as Rooster Coogburn nagged him his first Best Actor Academy Award).

The film also features a vocal turn by Bridges on the 19th century folk song “Greer County Bachelor,” but don’t go expecting Bad Blake from CRAZY HEART here.

In his very favorable review of the soundtrack, Tom Jurek of Allmusic.com remarked: “Of the 14 collaborations between the Coens and Burwell, this is among the most unique and satisfying for its enfolding of historic music into modern composition.”

Burwell wouldn’t return for the filmmaking sibling’s next film, but for the Coen brothers’ other favorite musical collaborator, T. Bone Burnett, it was a project he was born to produce. 

Historic music is what the lead character of the Coen brothers’ 2013 film, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, says he pays his rent with: “If it’s never been new and it never gets old, it’s a folk song” he tells the audience at the Gaslight Café in 1961 Greenwich Village.

Trouble is, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) has no home because he can’t afford to pay rent. Davis is loosely modeled on ‘60s folksinger Dave Von Ronk in his repertoire (Isaac’s Davis sings songs that Ronk covered like “Green, Green Rocky Road” and “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”) his almost identical album cover, and, as Ilijah Wald writes on the Inside Llewyn Davis website “shares his background as a working class kid who split his life between playing guitar and shipping out in the Merchant Marine.”

Davis was once part of a folk singing duo, Timlin & Davis. Timlin’s vocal is provided by Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons on the soundtrack, but the character is not seen as he committed suicide before the events in the film. Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan portray a folk duo, Jim & Jean, based on the real life Jim and Jean (Jim Glover and Jean Ray) who were also one of the inspirations for Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara’s Mitch & Mickey characters in Christopher Guest’s A MIGHTY WIND.

One of the film’s catchiest moments, to Davis’s chagrin, occurs when Jim and Jean join Stark Sands as clean cut military man/folk singer Tom Nelson onstage to sing the popular folk song “Five Hundred Miles,” written by Hedy West. There also seems to be some Peter, Paul and Mary action in this bit.

Stark Sands’ Nelson is loosely based on folk singer Tom Paxton (confirmed by Nelson singsing Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind” at the Gaslight), Ramblin’ Jack Elliot is represented by Al Cody (played by Girls’ Adam Driver), and John Goodman’s Roland Turner is somewhat based on Doc Pomus, who wrote the hits “Save The Last Dance For Me” and “This Magic Moment” (and was profiled in the biodoc A.K.A. DOC POMUS). Then again, some are surmissing that Goodman's Turner is modeled on Dr. John.

One thing many critics have agreed on is that one of the musical highlights of the film is “Please Mr. Kennedy,” a purposely hokey protest song written by Timberlake’s character that Davis reluctantly plays guitar and sings back-up on because he needs the money. The song is based on a few similar songs from the early ‘60s such as “Please Mr. Kennedy Don't Send Me Off to Vietnam” so this is why, as amusing and well performed as it is by Isaac, Timberlake, and Driver, the song won’t be eligible for an Oscar nomination.

As for the movie capturing the moment before Bob Dylan broke big, Dylan's name is never uttered in INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS but Benjamin Davis, a dead-on Dylan lookalike, credited as “Young Bob” takes the stage at the Gaslight towards the end to sing (actually lip synch to) Dylan’s “Farewell.” 

The song, one of many unreleased Dylan gems from that era, is overheard while Davis gets beaten up in the alley – a signifier of a coming sea change for sure. Incidentally the soundtrack has a different version of the song than is used in the film - a studio outtake of “Farewell” appears on the record while Dylan's Whitmark Demo version appears in the film.

Also significant is that Dylan's “Farewell,” which he adapted from the British folk ballad “Leaving of Liverpool”is a similar song and sentiment to “Fare The Well (Dink's Song),” which appears twice on the soundtrack. These songs about leaving one life for another encapsulate the themes that seem to be hiding under the cold surface of the film.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS is a good example of how the music in the Coen brothers movies continues to be as memorable, or sometimes more memorable, as the imagery, acting, and thorny themes in their colossal canon. Here’s hoping that one day they’ll actually do an old school people-break-out-in-song Hollywood musical, and add that to the genres they’ve tackled.

Until then they’ve given us, as Stephen Root says in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU, some “fine a-pickin’ and a-singin’” Fare thee well for now.

More later…

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at a indie art house near you:

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
(Dirs. Ethan & Joen Coen, 2013)

   
We first meet the protagonist of the Coen brothers' 16th film performing at the Gaslight Cafe in the Greenwich Village of the early '60s. Bathed in white light, Oscar Isaacs' Llewyn Davis beautifully sings the traditional folk song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” on the same stage that artists such as Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan cut their musical teeth.

The film sets out to capture the moment right before Dylan exploded on the scene; before the '60s really became the '60s and there were only faint whiffs of the revolution to come in the air.

Davis is caught in a shaky place in his crumbling career - his partner in a folk singing duo (Timlin and Davis) commited suicide, his solo album (also named “Inside Llewyn Davis”) isn't selling, and he has no fixed abode or even a winter coat. Davis also gets the news that he got his friend Jim's (Justin Timberlake) wife Jean (Carey Mulligan) pregnant so he has to come up with the money for an abortion.

Oh, and there's a cat he's saddled with because he accidentally let it loose from the last place he crashed.

Yep, it looks like Llewyn's life is getting dumped on in the same 'what does it all mean' manner that previous Coen character Minnesotan physics professor Larry Gobnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) had to contend with in their next to last film A SERIOUS MAN (2008).

At least Davis has his music to help get him through, but even that seems to be less and less comfort during these dour days. Especially as the music others are making seem to be catching on much more - in one scene a despondent Davis watches disgusted as a Gaslight audience starts singing along with Mulligan, Timberlake, and Stark Sands as a clean cut military man/folksinger on Hedy West's “500 Miles.”

Seeking new management in the form of F. Murray Abraham as Bud Grossman (based on Dylan manager Albert Grossman), Davis goes on a road trip with a spaced out beat poet (Garret Hedlund) and a surly jazz musician (John Goodman).

It's a gas to see Goodman back in a Coen brothers film after well over a decade (his last was O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? in 2000) amusingly berating Davis, his music, and cat (“Is that part of your act? Every time you play a C major he pukes a hairball?”) from the back seat.

The film takes some troubling turns which I won't spoil in this extended side trip, but nothing that I grew weary of like I'm hearing in some other critics' grumblings.

I'm incredibly biased both because I'm a big Coen brothers fan and can follow them down just about any tangent no matter how seemingly meaningless, and because I'm a huge fan of the era they're meticulously depicting here.

The Coens and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who they previously worked with on their segment for the short film anthology PARIS JE T' AIME (2006), used the iconic album cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan as an aesthetic reference point. The slightly faded blue and yellowish tint adds to the film authenticity in the exterior show covered street scenes, while the interior atmospheric lighting in the Gaslight bits made me feel like I was there at that historic time and place.

Despite the dead-on look of the film, and the wealth of great songs and performances throughout, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS may still be a tough sell to some folks because its title subject can be a bit of a dick who doesn't seem to be going anywhere. There is a definite humanity to him as he tries to do the right thing whether its dealing with the angry Mulligan's pregnancy or taking care of the cat, but neither approaches real redemption.

There's a lot to the fact that the film begins and ends with the same scene, but from different angles and a notably different addition to the soundtrack the second time around, involving Davis getting beaten up by a mysterious stranger in an alley behind the Gaslight.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS may not be one of their all-time greats, but it's still one of the best films of year because the Coen brothers keenly capture the times right before they really went a-changin,' and their week in the life of a failing troubadour premise explains precisely why somebody would want to beat up a folksinger.
 
More later...