The Threepenny Opera (4 stars)
Directed by G.W. Pabst. Written by Bertolt Brecht; adapted by B?la Bal?zs, L?o Lania, and Ladislaus Vajda. With Rudolf Forster, Lotte Lenya, Carola Neher, Reinhold Sch?nzel, and Fritz Rasp. (NR)
I'll be the first to admit that G.W. Pabst's The Threepenny Opera isn't for everyone. It's got a lot going against it today: a musical as social commentary in black and white probably isn't most people's idea of a fun night out, and that's before you get to the part about it being in German. But for those willing to give it a chance, it's a compelling story and a fascinating look at a lost era of filmmaking. And when I say lost, I mean it almost literally—the film was banned by the Nazis, who almost succeeded in destroying all the prints. The current version was carefully restored in 2006 for the film's 75th anniversary.
The touchstone for American audiences will no doubt be the Bobby Darin version of "Mack the Knife," the enduring Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht song that introduces us to the underworld chief at the heart of the film. What's only hinted at in the bouncing Darin hit, though, is much of what makes "Mackie" the villain he is, and it's sung loud and clear in the original—murder, arson, and the rape of an "underage widow." This is not the Rat Pack villainy of a Sinatra movie, where we cheer for the rogue; this Mackie is a nasty bit of business, ready to sink a knife into anyone in his way. Weill's "Mack the Knife" is its own beast musically, too; far from bouncing, in the film it is a halting refrain played on a hand-cranked street organ, reminiscent more of a surly and staggering drunk than the tux-clad crooner we're used to imagining.
Reduced to its essentials, the story is a simple one. Mackie marries Polly Peachum, daughter of "Beggar King" Peachum, who, despite being a petty criminal himself, disapproves of, and blackmails London's Chief of Police into arresting, Mackie. What makes it all so interesting is ever-shifting loyalty—criminal or not, all are concerned first and foremost with protecting themselves, whether from the gallows or loss of social position, and Brecht's disdain for such self-centered maneuvering is obvious. We'll overlook anything, he seems to say, if it benefits us, and to hell with those it hurts.
What's most surprising about watching this film today is the realization that little has changed; indeed, it's shocking how relevant many of its scenes are today. Most of Brecht's vitriol is directed at greed—the greed of financial institutions that keep men in poverty (Mackie, in a wonderful twist, becomes a bank president) and the more acute examples of people too concerned with lining their own pockets to care for their fellows. Some 75 years later, it all sounds awfully familiar.
One programming note: The film's advertisements use the phrase "with live musical accompaniment," which may be a bit misleading to those accustomed to previous Academy of Music productions that featured musicians performing a film's soundtrack as the reels unspooled. In this case the presenters plan to feature Kurt Weill's music before the film begins. "By having live music," says presenter Kathleen Kamping, "what we're doing is creating a current context for the film, prior to viewing, that gives the iconic music relevance."
City of Ember (3 stars)
Directed by Gil Kenan. Written by Caroline Thompson, based on the book by Jeanne Duprau. With Saoirse Ronan, Harry Treadaway, Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Mackenzie Crook, and Martin Landau. (PG)
Once in a while, something thought of as a "kids' book" becomes greater in the transition to film. Not greater in quality, necessarily, but in scope; something that ends up touching far more people, and meaning more different things to them, than the book ever could. I'm thinking of The Wizard of Oz, or Cinderella, or the Dr. Seuss specials my family watched every year on television—adaptations not always true to their sources, but nonetheless vital in their own way.
City of Ember doesn't quite reach that level, though at times it comes tantalizingly close. The story of a crumbling underground city and the two children who deliver it from destruction, it has all the earmarks of a classic tale—the wonder of another world, the inescapable pull of destiny—but it doesn't quite live up to its promise. That it is as good as it is becomes its downfall; we're left with the nagging sense of an opportunity missed.
The people of Ember wouldn't know. For centuries—since "the day the world ended"—they've lived in an underground city designed to keep mankind alive until it was safe to return to the surface. We're not told how the apocalypse came (nuclear winter? Global warming? A Palin presidency?) but along the way the instructions on how to ascend again were lost, and as Ember outlives its planned lifespan it begins to disintegrate.
While its corrupt mayor (Bill Murray) preaches patience, Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet discover clues that suggest a different future for the city. Here we're in Harry Potter territory, where bright, inquisitive children are able to unearth secrets their more closed-minded elders overlook. As Lina, 14-year-old Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) delivers a winning performance. Lina's just beginning to realize her own thoughts are as important as an adult's, and that those adults might even know less than she does.
What makes City of Ember work is the impressive set design of the underground city—its citizens make do with mostly handmade clothes, and the Dickensian look of the back alleys and squares is appropriately distressed and smudged—and an impressive supporting cast. Joining Murray are Tim Robbins as Doon's father, an enigmatic inventor; Mackenzie Crook (Gareth on the original British version of The Office); and Martin Landau as a narcoleptic pipe fitter.
What keeps it from being better is an apparent desire to rush things. A lot of small details are glossed over, and a lot of questions left unanswered—how such an important document was lost, or why the way out of Ember is so outrageously dangerous. Perhaps the filmmakers thought kids wouldn't be willing to sit still for another half hour. It's an unfortunate choice, and, I think, a misguided one; any kid could have told them that reading the book took far longer, but was more enjoyable.
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2 stars)
Directed by Peter Sollett. Written by Lorene Scafaria, based on the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. With Michael Cera, Kat Dennings, Aaron Yoo, and Alexis Dziena. (PG-13)
When I first saw the trailers for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, I was looking forward to seeing it. Here, I thought, could be another Say Anything, or Better Off Dead—a romantic comedy for the younger crowd that doesn't rehash the usual gimmicks of the genre. Now that I've seen it, I feel like I've been had—like someone told me they liked all the same books I did, only to reveal later that they only read Us Weekly.
It's tough, because in Michael Cera and Kat Dennings—the titular Nick and Norah—the film has two likeable leads. They play a pair of hipster teens who meet cute when Norah needs a fake boyfriend to impress queen bee Tris, the ex-girlfriend Nick's not quite over. One fake kiss leads to a night of romance, and before long the two are on the road to true love and indie-rock bliss as they trade trivia about obscure bands.
It's also no coincidence that the two films mentioned above starred John Cusack. With his wan and woebegone look, Cera shares that actor's underdog appeal. But the affection we feel for an underdog is undercut by the film's incessant insistence on its own hipness—a name-dropping soundtrack and cameos by Devendra Banhart and others.
There are some bumps in the road, of course; Norah's eternally drunk friend Caroline goes missing, and her ex-boyfriend pops up to cause trouble now and then. But from the start (even before she meets Nick, Norah is swooning over the mix CDs—with titles like Road to Closure Vol. 12—he makes for Tris), it's obvious where it's all going. In the end, Nick and Norah are just part of another banal date movie, one we suspect they'd walk out on themselves.
Also this week: The death of Paul Newman last month may have closed the book on a great career in cinema, but we'll always have his films, and in the wake of his passing, many of them are getting a second look. This week Hampshire College offers a two-day retrospective of 10 of the actor's movies, charting a path from 1961's The Hustler to his Oscar-winning turn in 1986's The Color of Money (Newman played pool hustler Fast Eddie Felson in both films, providing the retrospective with a neat set of bookends).
The short festival runs Saturday and Sunday—it begins at noon both days, and features refreshments from the actor's Newman's Own grocery line—and includes classics like Cool Hand Luke, The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as well as smaller works like the under-appreciated hockey comedy Slap Shot and Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain. Most intriguing, though, is the Robert Altman oddity Quintet. Largely dismissed as an only-his-mother-could-love-it piece of tripe, the film is an allegorical tale about the inhabitants of a future Ice Age and the deadly game they play that gives the film its title. It's rarely seen these days, and whether today's crowds find it more meaningful or still just a jumbled mess, it's a bold choice for inclusion in the retrospective, and gives filmgoers a chance to make up their own minds. The screenings take place on the Hampshire campus at Adele Simmons Hall, Auditorium 112.
Also screening this week is Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point. A look at the American counterculture, it was released in 1970 to near-absolute derision and only recently has begun to gain a halting acceptance as an important piece of the director's oeuvre. I'm still not convinced—it features some stiff non-actors as leads, and came between the better films Blow-Up and The Passenger; overall, it feels like a misstep in the career of a director who was always maddeningly inconsistent—but there's no denying that Antonioni was a man who was sure of his vision. It screens twice this week at Amherst Cinema, and will be introduced on Monday evening by Robin Blaetz, Chair of Film Studies at Mount Holyoke College and author of the anthology Women's Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks."
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
