David Elliott
Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, new
each Friday.
(Note: Nosh 179 will appear on Friday,
Jan. 3, 2020.)
We’re “dressed
for church” this week, with a movie about two popes, and another uniting two secular
saints of popular media, Tom Hanks and Fred Rogers. Happy holidays!
APPETIZER (Reviews: A
Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and
The Two Popes)
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
After seeing the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? in 2018, I thought: very good, but that’s
it for me and Fred Rogers. I grew up in the Roy Rogers TV era, and my kids
would be attuned to Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
Fred Rogers, a religious man turned TV educator with very special gifts, a
musical man who found the best rhythm and tone for talking to kids with
problems on his children’s show from Pittsburgh, was also an inventive pioneer,
commercially astute without merchandising himself. Sixteen years after
departure at 74, he is a modern legend, now reincarnated by Tom Hanks. Marielle
Heller, who directed Melissa McCarthy to an Oscar bid for her charmingly cranky
forger in Can You Ever Forgive Me?,
might well bring that honor to the multi-prized Hanks, for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
Hanks, Heller and the writers tickle some tears without
dipping into the corn syrup of old Hollywood tributes like Pride of the Yankees (Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig), Swanee River (Don Ameche as Stephen
Foster) and The Story of Will Rogers
(Will Jr. echoing his dad). The movie’s ace card, along with Hanks, is
compression. Rather than trot through Fred’s bio (which Morgan Neville’s
documentary did very well), this salute centers on Rogers lifting the Esquire profile writer Lloyd Vogel from
sneering New York cynicism and acidic rage about his alcoholic father. Fred
embraces him with the supple, caring decency that kids sensed intuitively. Much
of the pressure on Hanks is relieved by having the adult reactions of excellent
actors Matthew Rhys as Vogel, Susan Keleshi Watson as Vogel’s baby-laden wife, and terrific Chris Cooper as
the jarring but finally teachable father.
The story only wobbles in a surreal, confusing scene
of Vogel imagining himself as a tiny visitor to the famous TV set, as Fred
looms like a godly Gulliver. Fred dispenses calm advice, slightly fuzzy
homilies like rescue messages from a centered, pre-Trumped world. We can accept
a whole restaurant falling into silence when Fred asks his new, anxious friend
to join in a mute minute of reflection. The movie really pauses for a whole
minute of pensive silence. If Hanks does not exactly nail the nerdy-pastor
quality of Fred’s voice, he has the aura of loving sense and gentlemanly
authority. When Fred plays piano (Schumann) with his wife we are spellbound
again. Hanks’s work is lovely but not love-me, not a votive candle for him as
the Most Adorable Great Guy Since Jimmy Stewart. I sure can’t picture Hanks in Vertigo, but Stewart could never have
matched his Mr. Rogers.
The Two Popes
Heavens
Above!, a 1963 comedy about a dear
English priest (Peter Sellers) who is finally shot into space because the
Anglican hierarchy considers his pastoral ideals too naïve and risky, is the
oddest “religious” film I’ve ever seen (also quite funny). After 56 years it
has a very chatty rival, The Two Popes.
A kind of papal peekaboo, a docu-drama with superbly faked Vatican settings
abetted by news clips, it examines the relation between Pope Francis (played by
Jonathan Pryce) and his stern Bavarian predecessor Benedict XVI (Anthony
Hopkins). Benedict’s stunning 2013 resignation lifted Jorge Bergoglio, Cardinal
of Buenos Aires, to become the more liberal and loveable Francis. Not a
Catholic, I was moved and bemused. No other film has two aged pontiffs sitting
in a lovely room behind Michelangelo’s glorious Sistine Chapel, eating take-out
pizza and sipping Fantas before Benedict confides his dark night of the soul
and ritually confesses to the startled cardinal. The resulting transfer of
power would thunder-clap the Catholic world. Is this history, or fantasy, or a
kind of endearingly purgative prayer?
Pryce, sweet but no plaster Jesus, recalls in
flashback Jorge’s own long, dark night (tricky dealings with the Argentine
junta that persecuted his “radical” priests), and Juan Minujin is very fine as
the younger Bergoglio. Hopkins, wearing creaky age and a German accent
with flinty precision, provides much of
the dramatic tension that makes the conversations more human than pontifical.
Director Fernando Meirelles surprises us with abrupt jumps, as he did in City of God. Writer Anthony McCarten
flashes the kind of blithe cleverness that propelled his bio-pics about Freddy
Mercury (Bohemian Rhapsody), Stephen
Hawking (The Theory of Everything)
and Winston Churchill (Darkest Hour).
In a quick, glancing way the picture raises the crisis of priestly pedophilia.
Mostly we savor Hopkins and Pryce as they shape the challenging friction and
then fraternal bond of the lonely, intellectual, primly Benedictine German and
the modest, tender-hearted, Jesuit (but truly Franciscan) Argentinean. I will not
be converting, but these are two remarkable men.
SALAD (A List)
The next list, my 12
Best Movies of 2019, will appear on Friday, Jan. 3, 2020.
WINE (Vin Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)
Though
never a pope, the non-Catholic Orson Welles did play wily Cardinal Wolsey in Fred
Zinnemann’s A Man For All Seasons,
his red-robed bulk truly filling the wide screen. He was not voluble about it
to Peter Bogdanovich: “That came right after the Casino Royale caper, so you can imagine how grateful I was to be associated
with something decent. I enjoyed acting with Paul Scofield. A wonderful day –
that’s all it took.” (From the Welles/Bogdanovich This Is Orson Welles.)
ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)
No
actor was more subtle than Alec Guinness, whose artist Gulley Jimson in The Horse’s Mouth “has a sexual
forwardness rare for Alec. He slyly spoofed the machismo of military men,
taking that to a high level in Tunes of
Glory. He admired alpha-male friends like Jack Hawkins, Bill Holden and
Harry Andrews, and envied Richard Burton’s stellar wallop. Piers Paul Read’s
biography suggests a closeted gay or bi impulse, but never finds the closet
key. Possibly Alec didn’t either, letting the dress-up of acting reveal the
ribbons but hide the risks. One can’t imagine a brazen ‘man’s man’ being half
so good at depicting Jimson.” (From the Guinness/The Horse’s Mouth chapter
of my book Starlight Rising: Acting Up in
Movies, available from Amazon, Nook and Kindle.)
DESSERT (An Image)
A fine movie
image is more than a still, it’s a distillation.
On
Dec. 12 actor Danny Aiello died at 86. His best film work included Ruby, Moonstruck and (above) Sal the
pizza man in Do the Right Thing, in
which he is seen between John Turturro and Richard Edson (Universal Pictures
1989; director Spike Lee, d.p. Ernest Dickerson).
For previous Flix Noshes, scroll below.
No comments:
Post a Comment