By David Elliott
Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu,
served fresh each Friday.
APPETIZER: Reviews of Hidden Figures and Lion
Hidden Figures
For
half a century a running gag in sci-fi has been Mars Needs Women, a dopey TV film in which Tommy Kirk leads an
ambassadorial delegation from Mars. NASA Needs Black Women
would certainly have been a catchier title than Hidden Figures, but the aim here is not satirical kitsch. At times formulaic,
and fairly prim in its archival nostalgia, this retrieval of almost forgotten
history is also smart and human, a salute that deserves its success.Ostensibly the star is hefty, high-smiling Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, a keg of sass and savvy who heads a team of gifted black women recruited to work on the space agency’s computation force. Not given a formal rank, she is isolated with her “girls” in a drab section of the NASA compound in segregated Virginia. Spencer steals any scene she cares to, but director Theodore Melfi keeps her under control, with no loss of buzz. He gives time to pretty Janelle Monae as spark-tongued Mary Jackson, who goes for a degree in engineering despite racist obstacles. And gives even more time to Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, a math wiz who became the Apollo 7 program’s secret intellectual weapon. Meanwhile, the Russians were in Sputnik heaven and IBM was installing a huge, main-frame computer that would threaten many of the women’s jobs.
It is Henson, ripened beyond Shug in Hustle & Flow (2005) and her sexy Vernell,
“finer than frog’s hair” in Talk to Me
(2007), who most rivets attention. Her facial lines angle complex feelings in multiple
directions, and when she runs (in heels) across the NASA campus to find the one
“colored women’s” rest room, the story eviscerates the stilted absurdity of complacent
racism in the JFK era (1961 and ’62). Katherine stuns the white males of the top
brain team with her rapid brilliance; her dead-on calculations saved astronaut
lives. Crucially she impresses big boss Al Harrison (Kevin Costner, whose
flat-top hair and terse, gum-chewing manner accent an ace portrait of authority
under constant pressure). And as a tough, snippy manager who is also a blithe
racist, Kirsten Dunst abandons her previous girlishness for real maturity.
Some of the scenes of family life and romance lock
in snugly, a little too polished for period display. Many of the white nerds in
white shirts are interchangeable, and maybe a balding actor should have been
chosen to play John Glenn (he went into orbit at age 40 and was charismatic
even without much hair on top). Clearly, the math-driven science is flashed at
us with small hope of our comprehension, and Melfi is a crafty but custodial director.
Such limits do not deflate the story’s moving power. Really, who knew? And who
back then, apart from insiders, cared? Hidden
Figures brings back the triumph and tensions of unique women in a very
special era of routine fear and brave optimism. In space the planet that Glenn
sees is neither black nor white. It is, beautifully, our very own wild, blue
yonder.
Lion
There
have been plenty of good movies about lost children – The Kid, The Wizard of Oz, The Search, Oliver Twist, The Quiet One, Shoeshine
and Pixote come fast to mind –
but Garth Davis’s film Lion has a
special bite. It’s the real story of Saroo, a poor Indian separated from his older
brother at age 5. He got on a train that happened to be a “ghost train” rumbling,
without passengers (except for Saroo), to distant Calcutta. After avoiding potential
sex slavery, he was dropped into a dismal orphanage, until a welfare worker
secured his adoption by a loving Australian couple in Tasmania. Saroo is played
as a boy by Sunny Pawar, whose dark, troubled face justifies his first name with
a remarkable smile. This is certainly no Apu
Trilogy, but the Indian scenes of the homesick boy are vividly tense and
disturbing, and very well photographed by Greig Fraser.
Lion (the title translates Saroo’s birth name) loses some power in comfy,
bourgeois Tasmania, where the child grows into buffed stud Dev Patel,
Hollywood’s favorite British Indian actor. The Aussie payoff is Nicole Kidman
as Saroo’s new, very committed mother. In two key scenes Kidman, with no reach
for glam, shows just what an experienced star talent can bring to a movie. Dev Patel
sometimes looks like a wandering Jesus who misses Mary, but he sustains interest.
How Saroo gets back to India, and what he finds, makes an emotional climax as
satisfyingly heartfelt as any film has recently had.
SALAD (A List)
These
32 Little-Seen Marvels merit more of
an audience. In order of arrival: Menilmontant
(Dmitri Kirsanov, 1924), Platinum Blonde
(Frank Capra, 1931), Alice Adams
(George Stevens, 1935), The Sea Wolf
(Michael Curtiz, 1941), Monsieur Vincent
(Maurice Cloche, 1947), Last Holiday (Henry Cass, 1950), Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951),
Five Fingers (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1952),
Crime Wave (Andre de Toth, 1953), French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955), Men in War (Anthony Mann, 1957), The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958), Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959), Blast of Silence (Allan Baron, 1961), High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963), Crime and Punishment (Lev Kulijanov, 1970),
Murmur of the Heart (Louis Malle, 1971),
Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinnemann, 1973),
The Outfit (John Flynn, 1973), California Split (Robert Altman, 1974), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam
Peckinpah, 1974), Next Stop, Greenwich
Village (Paul Mazursky, 1976), Wise
Blood (John Huston, 1979), Saint Jack
(Peter Bogdanovich, 1979), High Season (Clare
Peploe,1987), Big Night (Stanley
Tucci, 1996), The Whole Wide World
(Dan Ireland, 1994), Mac (John Turturro, 1997), Catarina in the Big City (Paolo Virzi,
2005), Colma: The Musical (Richard
Wong, 2006), Tony Manero (Pablo
Larrain, 2008) and Aquarius (Kleber
Mendonca, 2015).
WINE (Vin Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)
In
1982 Citizen Welles recalled a special instance of Hearst retribution in the
wake of Citizen Kane: “I was
lecturing, I think it was Pittsburgh… and a detective came up to me as I was
having supper (and said) don’t go back to your hotel … I said ‘Why not?,’ and
he said they’ve got a 14 year-old girl in the closet and two cameramen waiting
for you to come in. And of course I would have gone to jail … I never went back
to the hotel. I just waited until the train in the morning. I’ve often wondered
what happened to the cameramen and the girl waiting all night for me to
arrive.” (From Walking Shadows: Orson Welles, William Randolph Hearst and Citizen Kane,
by John Evangelist Walsh).
ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)
The
personal impact of a great film from a great town: “Facing Rome’s Trevi fountain in 1972, I expose a Polaroid print
of memory: Houston’s Tower Theater, ablaze in light for the 1961 premiere of La Dolce Vita, as my teenage self sneaks into the throng. The Vatican had
denounced an ‘epic debauch,’ and debate steamed like lava. I still agree with
critic Robert Hughes who, decades after first exploring Rome, avowed that ‘no
film has ever fascinated me more.” (From the Marcello Mastroianni/La Dolce Vita chapter of my book Starlight Rising: Acting Up in Movies,
available from Amazon, Nook and Kindle.)
DESSERT (An Image)
A great movie image is more than a still,
it’s a distillation.
Harry
Dean Stanton and Brad Dourif in the crazy Dixie of Wise Blood (New Line Cinema 1979; director John Huston,
cinematographer Gerry Fisher).
For previous Flix Nosh meals, scroll
below.
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