Knight at the Movies - Archives
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Gus Van Sant gives us more troubled youth, gay director Ira Sachs finds inspiration in Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry
Out director Gus Van Sant heads back to the Portland underground for his latest movie Paranoid Park. That’s the name the
skateboarding teens call the concrete canyon under the freeway where they slide and soar through the air which we see as the movie
begins (the skateboard montages are like an homage to the divers in Reinfenstahl’s Olympia). Scored to haunting music Nino Rota
wrote for Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits, Van Sant immediately draws the viewer into another film focusing on his favorite theme: the
secretive world of outsiders – specifically, those inhabited by teenage boys. Locked away in their own cultural universe, these locked
in “lost boys” seem to approach the world with their own unwritten code of ethics and rules. Van Sant uses his trademark photo tricks
– slo-mo montages, grainy, handheld shots, etc. – to further inculcate you into the skateboarding subculture.
The film, based on a novel by Blake Nelson details the before and after day to day events of an accidental killing of a security guard
at a rail yard near the park by Alex (Gabe Nevins), one of the skateboarders. Throughout, Van Sant’s camera stays with the self-
contained Alex and we see the world through his eyes. When questioned at school by a police interrogator in a phony “I’m your
friend; I’m cool too” manner one day at school Alex has his polite but terse answers ready. Alex is smart enough to lie convincingly
but we see that he’s not smart enough to realize that his choices will ultimately lock him in emotionally for life.
Alex’s protective emotional covering is cracked open just once when he reveals to a female friend with a touch of wistfulness, “I just
feel like there’s something outside of normal life.” We’ve also seen the introspective Alex drawing and writing in an attempt to deal
with his feelings. There’s also a hint that Alex, who is struggling with the accidental death and the fallout from his parent’s divorce,
might be struggling with gay sexuality – but it’s elusive, as mysterious and out of reach as Alex is himself.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The 1953 pulp mystery novel “Five Roundabouts to Heaven” is the source material for an intriguing black comedy of manners and
murder titled Married Life from another out director, Ira Sachs. Chris Cooper is the oh-so polite Harry who has fallen deeply in
love with Kay (Rachel McAdams) but can’t marry her because he can’t bear to divorce his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) – he’s convinced
she won’t be able to handle it. All this he reveals to his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan – funny, playing on his cool image) who
listens sympathetically. But when the calculating Richard, who is single, gets a look at the platinum blonde knockout Kay, he decides
to make a play for her himself.
Just as this is happening Harry decides that the only thing to do is to kill Pat to spare her feelings and that’s when as Brosnan’s
Richard informs us in voice over, the real trouble started. Sachs’ film takes its arch, darkly comedic tone from Hitchcock’s underrated
The Trouble with Harry – the movie sounds the same, sort of looks the same (the period detail and costumes are impeccable) and at
one point McAdams, who is made up to look like Kim Novak in Vertigo, even says, “The trouble with Harry…” at the beginning of one
of her speeches, drawing laughs from knowing Hitchcock fans. But the delicious premise is a sham and suffers from Sachs' fealty to
the constrained social rituals of the era which keep the emotions in check. Todd Haynes’ homage of the same rigid conventions in
Far From Heaven, which the film reminds one of, used Douglas Sirk’s passionate soap operas not Hitchcock’s cool psychological
studies as his inspiration which allowed his characters to act out at least behind closed doors. The folks in Married Life, however, stay
as strapped in as those stiff fashions the women are forced to wear and though the leads rise to the challenge the polite veneer
eventually erodes your interest in the outcome. Even the music, as perfect an example of seamless perfection as I have heard (by
Dickon Hinchliffe), reinforces this (I wish to hastily add that the score will be a great stand alone listening experience). Sachs' movie
could have used one of those over the top emotional outbursts ala Sirk and a much better title (Married Life is as bland a title as one
could want – the point, I realize but still…). Charming and diverting as it is, Married Life ends up not nearly as involving as either its
pulp mystery source material or as darkly entertaining as its Hitchcock homage promises.
skateboarding teens call the concrete canyon under the freeway where they slide and soar through the air which we see as the movie
begins (the skateboard montages are like an homage to the divers in Reinfenstahl’s Olympia). Scored to haunting music Nino Rota
wrote for Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits, Van Sant immediately draws the viewer into another film focusing on his favorite theme: the
secretive world of outsiders – specifically, those inhabited by teenage boys. Locked away in their own cultural universe, these locked
in “lost boys” seem to approach the world with their own unwritten code of ethics and rules. Van Sant uses his trademark photo tricks
– slo-mo montages, grainy, handheld shots, etc. – to further inculcate you into the skateboarding subculture.
The film, based on a novel by Blake Nelson details the before and after day to day events of an accidental killing of a security guard
at a rail yard near the park by Alex (Gabe Nevins), one of the skateboarders. Throughout, Van Sant’s camera stays with the self-
contained Alex and we see the world through his eyes. When questioned at school by a police interrogator in a phony “I’m your
friend; I’m cool too” manner one day at school Alex has his polite but terse answers ready. Alex is smart enough to lie convincingly
but we see that he’s not smart enough to realize that his choices will ultimately lock him in emotionally for life.
Alex’s protective emotional covering is cracked open just once when he reveals to a female friend with a touch of wistfulness, “I just
feel like there’s something outside of normal life.” We’ve also seen the introspective Alex drawing and writing in an attempt to deal
with his feelings. There’s also a hint that Alex, who is struggling with the accidental death and the fallout from his parent’s divorce,
might be struggling with gay sexuality – but it’s elusive, as mysterious and out of reach as Alex is himself.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The 1953 pulp mystery novel “Five Roundabouts to Heaven” is the source material for an intriguing black comedy of manners and
murder titled Married Life from another out director, Ira Sachs. Chris Cooper is the oh-so polite Harry who has fallen deeply in
love with Kay (Rachel McAdams) but can’t marry her because he can’t bear to divorce his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) – he’s convinced
she won’t be able to handle it. All this he reveals to his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan – funny, playing on his cool image) who
listens sympathetically. But when the calculating Richard, who is single, gets a look at the platinum blonde knockout Kay, he decides
to make a play for her himself.
Just as this is happening Harry decides that the only thing to do is to kill Pat to spare her feelings and that’s when as Brosnan’s
Richard informs us in voice over, the real trouble started. Sachs’ film takes its arch, darkly comedic tone from Hitchcock’s underrated
The Trouble with Harry – the movie sounds the same, sort of looks the same (the period detail and costumes are impeccable) and at
one point McAdams, who is made up to look like Kim Novak in Vertigo, even says, “The trouble with Harry…” at the beginning of one
of her speeches, drawing laughs from knowing Hitchcock fans. But the delicious premise is a sham and suffers from Sachs' fealty to
the constrained social rituals of the era which keep the emotions in check. Todd Haynes’ homage of the same rigid conventions in
Far From Heaven, which the film reminds one of, used Douglas Sirk’s passionate soap operas not Hitchcock’s cool psychological
studies as his inspiration which allowed his characters to act out at least behind closed doors. The folks in Married Life, however, stay
as strapped in as those stiff fashions the women are forced to wear and though the leads rise to the challenge the polite veneer
eventually erodes your interest in the outcome. Even the music, as perfect an example of seamless perfection as I have heard (by
Dickon Hinchliffe), reinforces this (I wish to hastily add that the score will be a great stand alone listening experience). Sachs' movie
could have used one of those over the top emotional outbursts ala Sirk and a much better title (Married Life is as bland a title as one
could want – the point, I realize but still…). Charming and diverting as it is, Married Life ends up not nearly as involving as either its
pulp mystery source material or as darkly entertaining as its Hitchcock homage promises.
Circumspection:
Paranoid Park-Married Life
Expanded Edition of 3-12-08 Windy City Times Knight at the Movies Column
By Richard Knight, Jr.
Paranoid Park-Married Life
Expanded Edition of 3-12-08 Windy City Times Knight at the Movies Column
By Richard Knight, Jr.
