Inkheart
Directed by Iain Softley. Written by David Lindsay-Abaire, based on the novel by Cornelia Funke. With Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Sienna Guillory, Eliza Bennett, and Andy Serkis. (PG)
The idea at the center of Inkheart, a new film based on the young adult novel by German writer Cornelia Funke, takes an old storytelling trope and turns it on its head. Where we've often seen films whose book-loving characters find themselves plunged into the world between the covers—think The NeverEnding Story or Labyrinth—this film asks what would happen if, instead, the heroes and villains of our pulp adventures were transported to our brick-and-mortar world.
Their means of transport in this case is Mortimer "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser), a book buyer and repairer whose secret ability as a "Silvertongue" allows him to conjure into reality anything he reads aloud. Where some might find this a useful skill—spending their days reading about diamond mines, say, or the history of the Playboy Mansion—Mo regards it as a curse. It turns out that for every thing taken out of a book, something else must go in, and he has accidentally trapped his wife Resa inside the pages of Inkheart.
Nine years later, as he and his daughter Meggie travel the antiquarian bookseller's circuit, Mo is still searching for another copy of the rare book with which to rescue her. Dogging him on his journey are the characters he read out of the book when Resa went in: a fire-juggler named Dustfinger (Paul Bettany) and the villainous Capricorn (Andy Serkis, finally getting a chance to act in the flesh after his stint as Gollum in the Lord of The Rings trilogy). Dustfinger's plight mirrors Mo's; he longs for his own wife, still living in Inkheart, and wants Mo to transport him back into the story. Capricorn is more mercenary; a mere secondary character in the book, he's more than happy to live in a world where his cruelty brings riches, henchmen and a castle in Italy.
That castle compound is where most of the action takes place, and it's stocked with a cast of characters that Capricorn—who has another Silvertongue prisoner—has had pulled from literature: the Minotaur of Crete, the flying monkeys of Oz, and so on. It's a great idea that isn't given much thought here; what could have been strange and wondrous in the hands of a director like Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) is reduced to a checklist. We dutifully take note, but nothing comes of it.
Instead, the movie quickly devolves into just another PG adventure where nobody gets hurt, families are reunited, and every problem is resolved so easily that you wonder why the characters didn't simply do in the first five minutes what they do in the last. The distinct sense of letdown is only enhanced when a climactic scene involves a plummy Helen Mirren—a wonderful actress who not long ago won the Oscar for her performance as Queen Elizabeth—riding to the rescue astride a unicorn.
What makes it bearable is Paul Bettany's performance as the conflicted Dustfinger. Where Fraser simply solidifies his position as king of the family-friendly adventurers—essentially just rehashing his roles from the Mummy franchise and his recent Jules Verne project—Bettany is at least able to create some real drama in Dustfinger. Desperate to return to his wife, his sympathies shift between Mo and his adversaries, his loyalty dependent on who is best suited to help him at any given time. For a character from a book, it's a stance far more human than those of the supposedly "real" people around him. Should Inkheart have a sequel, it would do well to tell his story.
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Also this week: With Northampton's Academy of Music focusing more on live performance than film these days, moviegoers don't get many opportunities to enjoy its wonderful screen. Main Street Motion Media, the organization that screened films at the venue in 2008, cancelled a recent film series due to what its website describes as "failed contract negotiations" with the Academy's management, and it's unclear if the group will return. In the meantime, this weekend offers two chances to catch a movie at the venerable theater.
Fans of Shamim Sarif's The World Unseen, which starred Sheetal Sheth and Lisa Ray as star-crossed lovers, will be glad to hear that the actresses are back in Sarif's new film, a lesbian romantic comedy with the winking title I Can't Think Straight. Described alternately as "sensual, witty and elegant" (L.A. Times) and "yet another weightless confection from… Sarif" (New York Times), the film is less concerned with the volatile mixture of sexuality and religion in Middle Eastern cultures—though the advertising makes note that it is "the first lesbian film to have a Palestinian woman as the protagonist"—than with the truly difficult challenge: making a solid romantic comedy.
Here Canadian actress Lisa Ray plays Tala, the favored daughter of a wealthy Jordanian family. After a string of failed engagements, she's due to tie the knot with her latest fianc?. As her Christian parents plan an extravagant wedding in Jordan, Tala finds herself attracted to Leyla (Sheth), an Indian Muslim living in London who longs to become a writer. As both women struggle with their sense of self, the film moves from London to Amman and back again, shining a light on how our surroundings influence our idea of identity, and how our identity often outgrows its surroundings.
The New England premiere of I Can't Think Straight at the Academy of Music is presented by Out! For Reel Film Series, an organization dedicated to screening the often overlooked films that center on the LGBT community. The one-night-only screening takes place Friday, Feb. 6 at 7:30 p.m., with advance tickets available at www.OutForReel.org.
On Saturday afternoon, live music comes to the Academy as part of a multimedia Mozart program. Beginning at 2 p.m., the Pioneer Valley Symphony Chamber Players perform the composer's "Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A," to be followed by a screening of Amadeus, Milos Forman's Oscar-winning film about the composer.
Willfully, gleefully over the top, Amadeus presents the life of Mozart as seen through the eyes of his rival and admirer, court composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham, who also took home the Oscar for his performance). Told in flashback—the elderly Salieri is confined to an asylum after an attempted suicide—it charts the spectacular rise and sadly early fall of Mozart, a man whose musical genius is at odds with his lewd, often childish behavior. Unable to understand why God would bless such a man with such a gift, Salieri plots to ruin Mozart and steal the requiem he secretly commissions from the composer.
At once operatic and full of low humor, Amadeus is one of the few musical biographies that manages to blossom into a true film. Instead of a strung-together collection of anecdotes—boy gets guitar, gets famous, gets drunk—this story is more contained, showing the enormity of one man's genius through the terrible effect it had on another.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
