Cinema Survey 16
Nosferatu: Robert Eggers made one of the better movies of 2019, the last year of movies and last great movie year. The Lighthouse was vivid, intense, sounded great and was far more attuned to my interests than any of Eggers’ other movies. Renaissance and on, I’m there. Not getting into men in tights and Nordic warriors. I understand that Nosferatu takes place in 1938, but they’re running around with candles in top hats and talking about, UGH, witchcraft and wizardry. That one shot of Lily Rose-Depp where the camera dollies around into a medium shot and she flips up and does the demon voice was cool; the rest of the movie was poorly-lit and the CGI looked terrible.
Why do that? Why is it more important to be accurate than beautiful? Just make a shot of the city now. Find a different city. Find a village. And the monster? I’m not into monster or monster movies, they’re boring. They’re really boring because they can’t happen. I hope Eggers makes a slasher movie soon; or anything in the 20th century. But pre-World War II, and ideally turn of the century through the 1920s. Robert Eggers’ Teapot Dome. Does he even care about that shit? I hope so, he’s a good filmmaker: he made The Lighthouse…
Monkey Business + Duck Soup: Double-feature to start the year at the Senator. Before last Wednesday, I’d never seen a Marx Brothers movie, a huge blind spot (along with The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, and Abbott and Costello). It was a bitterly cold night in Baltimore, and there were still at least 100 people out and about and loving every minute of two movies that are 90 years old. The audience was alive as soon as the Four Marx Brothers popped out of their barrels and began their famous barrage that would make Duck Soup director Leo McCarey miserable throughout its shoot of nonstop chaos. McCarey didn’t want the job, tried to get out of it, and it became his most seen—one of the most seen—movies. Make Way for Tomorrow is too much of an unalloyed bummer to reach the span of It’s a Wonderful Life, and McCarey’s naturally outshone, outdone, and completely spent by the Marx Brothers.
The Royal Tenenbaums: This far and away Wes Anderson’s best movie, the immaculate balance between the necessary reality of his first films and the airtight containment of his work in the last 15 years. Two particularly stunning shots: the family framed in Royal Tenenbaum’s (Gene Hackman) doorway, with Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) standing at the opposite end of the room, but blocked as if she’s growing out of her sibling’s shoulder. This image communicates her character instantaneously, and it’s striking precisely because it doesn’t call attention to itself; you feel her far away before you realize that she’s standing in a certain way for the lens to make her appear smaller. I like most of Anderson’s movies, but none of the new ones feel this real, and a shot like that is a great example of dynamic range in cinema: The Royal Tenenbaums is Anderson’s most alive film.
The other shot is a conversation between Margot and Ritchie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) on a bridge somewhere in Manhattan. Anderson and cinematographer Robert Yeoman dolly around them as they speak (ending in a snap zoom into Bill Murray eavesdropping on them on the roof of a nearby building). Both endpoints are wonderful compositions on their own, using the lines of the rail and the streets and buildings below, but it’s in the dolly pan that these lines reach enormous depth as they warp around the screen, following each character, completely naturalistic yet so specifically composed it feels surreal. Making an ordinary bridge in Manhattan this dynamic—this much like an Anderson movie of today—is a greater accomplishment than making the first film that’s also a magazine (The French Dispatch).
An iconic film, it will be Anderson’s enduring work and its characters will continue to live as archetypes within the American pop culture lexicon, especially Margot Tenenbaum. Anderson’s use of pop music is at its most skillful and poignant here as well: Margot getting off the bus in slow motion to Nico singing “These Days,” a song I don’t even like, is a moment that just stops you dead. It was a heart-stopping moment in the theater, totally in tune with the movie; the same went for Ritchie’s suicide attempt set to Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay.” Using wall-to-wall music as in Tenenbaums was trendy at the time, but like Tarantino and the other Hollywood Anderson, this Anderson isn’t an empty-headed iPod kid numbly shuffling through high school favorites; he’s able to turn revolver favorites like “Ruby Tuesday” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” into great movie moments that hold the song up and bring it to a higher place of grandeur. I don’t know of any young American director working today that understands pop music at all.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith