Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman is probably best known for his role as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter franchise. With that character, he basically played the ultimate double agent, a good guy turned bad guy, turned good guy who acted like a bad guy.  Though he looks and acts like a barely veiled villain through the whole series, in the end, we learn Snape is among the most vulnerable and human of all the characters in Harry Potter’s world. Love, loyalty, and loss drive him to do both horrible and heroic things, and it takes a unique actor to effectively play someone who is powerful and pathetic, someone we can both revile and revere. Rickman’s burdened face and that profoundly deep, resonant voice conveyed the weight of loss, and conflict that his character carried with him constantly.

Rickman died last week of pancreatic cancer at the age of 69, and it is a huge loss to both stage and screen. Rickman was a versatile and talented performer. While he may have been in a bad movie or two, he never turned in a bad performance. His characters were always grounded, believable, and compelling.

 

While younger viewers will recognize him from Harry Potter or as the voice of the Caterpillar in the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, Rickman got his start in movies back in the 80s with the classic action film, Die Hard. Rickman’s smart, distainful, wily Hans Gruber is one of the greatest film villains of all time and was a huge part of why that film remains so fun and watchable. Every sequel in that franchise has tried desperately to recreate the fizzy, bantery hero/villain chemistry with little success. No one has been able to come up with an opponent for John Maclean as funny and menacing as Rickman’s creation. 

 He played several other notable bad guys. As great as Hans Gruber is, my personal favorite is Rickman’s performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Reportedly, Rickman kept turning down the role until the filmmakers agreed to let him have free reign in creating the character. I’m glad they agreed because is Sheriff is a maniacal, petulant tyrant who minces around his castle like a 1970s Mick Jagger. It is wonderfully, perfectly over the top and is easily the best part of the entire film.

My favorite Alan Rickman performance comes from Ang Lee’s 1995 Jane Austen adaptation, Sense and Sensibility. In the hard-luck tale of the Dashwood sisters, we meet Rickman’s Colonel Brandon, a retired military man with money, prestige, a secret in his past, and a torch for Marianne, the passionate, impetuous Dashwood sister. Of course, Marianne is in love with the handsome and more age appropriate John Willoughby and so Brandon spends the majority of the movie deeply in love and deeply reserved about it. Again, this is a testament to Rickman’s ability as an actor. He could convey soulfulness and longing with just an arched eyebrow or a momentary pause. Almost invariably, Rickman was the most interesting person on whatever screen he occupied. 

This weekend, you should watch Sense and Sensibility or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or Truly, Madly, Deeply, or Galaxy Quest or Sweeney Todd. Watch Rickman closely and you'll see why the film world is poorer for his absence. It is always sad when beloved actors pass away, but one of the beauties of film is that we get to keep enjoying their work even after they're gone.

This tribute was originally broadcast on Q90.1. For more information, go to www.deltabroadcasting.org.

Joy

 

Last Sunday night, Jennifer Lawrence won a Golden Globe for her performance in David O. Russell’s film Joy. In the film, Lawrence plays the title character, an overburdened nearly 40 year old divorced mother of two. She busily takes care of her children, her shut-in mother, her lounge singer ex-husband who lives in her basement, and her newly divorced father who also moves into her basement. Being swamped with a decaying house and unpaid bills, Joy never gets a chance to do anything for herself. Specifically, she never gets to develop any of the ideas she has for inventions. 

The film shows us that, as a young girl, Joy was full of ideas and ambition, but somewhere along the way, all of that got put on hold, so she lives her life harried, underwater, and unfulfilled.

When her father begins dating a wealthy woman with business experience, Joy simultaneously gets an idea and finds that she a potential investor. After red wine gets spilled on the expensive deck of the girlfriend’s sailboat and Joy has to mop up the broken glass and mess, she decides she wants to develop a self-wringing mop. The story of the movie is essentially how she designs and manufactures the Miracle Mop while running into money troubles, indifference, fraud, and betrayal at every step of the way. She eventually gets on QVC and sells tens of thousands of her mops but her troubles don’t end there. Her triumphant performance on live tv selling her product is not the climax you think it is and the movie goes on for another thirty or forty minutes after that happens. I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that things turn out alright in the end and Joy is victorious.

Of course, the film isn’t just about a mop or selling stuff on TV. It’s about being who you really are and not letting the heaviness of everyday life weigh you down to the point that you stop pursuing what really matters to you. It is, without question, the most entertaining, well made movie about a QVC product you will ever see.

Jennifer Lawrence was rightly recognized at the Golden Globes because at 25 she manages to believably convey the discouragement, feistiness, devotion, and conflict of a weary but hopeful 40 year old woman. She’s a very organic performer and even though she never really looks old enough to play her character, you buy it.

While Lawrence’s performance is truly wonderful, the film itself is far from perfect. It was directed by David O. Russell, who began his career with prickly, provocative, sometimes experimental films but has transformed himself into a mainstream, feel-good storyteller. His films used to make you squirm but now he just wants to make you cheer. Joy is in the same vein as The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook. It features the same loving but flawed and unsupportive family characters, the same blue collar setting, the same triumphant underdog story. Of course, lots of directors explore the same territory over and over again. Scorcese, Spielberg, Tarantino, and plenty of others make the same film over and over again. The question is, how well do they do it.

In the case of Joy, there are problems with the script. There are dangling loose ends, completely unused characters, and too-convenient coincidences throughout. You could blame these problems on the fact that Joy is supposedly based on a true story, but it’s so very loosely adapted from the actual true story, there’s no reason for there to be  plot holes or random characters. Russell had no interest in a literal biopic, so he can’t blame the film’s blank spots on the biography. 

Still, even with the nagging questions of the script, Lawrence's award winning performance is enough. It's real and powerful enough to carry the entire film. I left the theater knowing Joy was a flawed, underdeveloped movie, but not caring about those flaws and loving it anyway.


This review originally appeared on Q90.1. For more information, go to www.deltabroadcasting.org.

I'll See You In My Dreams

I’ll See You In My Dreams is not your typical meet-cute romance. For one thing, instead of starring whatever generic, baby faced ingénue is on the cover of Maxim that month, it stars 72 year old Blythe Danner. Most of the rest of the cast is well over 60 as well and that alone makes it an unusual film. But also, it’s a strange film because it’s unusual combination of love story, meditation of aging, and awkward inter-generational buddy movie. I’ll See You In My Dreams is a hard film to categorize and so, it’s hard to know what to expect. If you go in hoping for a safe, senior citizen-empowerment tale or a raunchy, “don’t old people do the wackiest things” comedy, you’ll be disappointed on both counts. 

 

Danner plays Carol, a woman who has been widowed for the last twenty years, placidly living a very comfortable life in southern California. She plays bridge and golf and has lunch with her friends. She goes for walks in the balmy weather and watches TV with Hazel, her trusty but aging dog. At the outset of the film, Carol has to put Hazel down, and we see her struggling to know how to grieve. She drinks a lot of wine and finds that there’s little pleasure to be had in her life.

Then, almost simultaneously, two new relationships begin for her. First, she unexpectedly befriends Lloyd, the 30 something guy who cleans her pool played by Martin Starr They drink and commiserate together, first just when he comes to work and later when they go out to karaoke together. Lloyd has moved home to take care of his mother but is lost and directionless. Their friendship is as platonic as it is unlikely. They don’t form a mother/son bond nor are they lovers. They simply get along because both are uncertain of what they’re supposed to be doing with their lives. While their relationship is innocent, it’s not without its tension. Lloyd is a gentleman at all times, but Carol is also a stone cold fox, so it makes for some interesting moments of unexpected awkwardness.

The other relationship that begins for Carol is with Bill, played by Sam Elliot. Bill is also a retiree but one who, rather than spend his later years quietly, has decided to spend all the money he has and enjoy his life. After seeing each other around town several times, he pulls up to Carol in his expensive sports car and simply says, “I want to take you to lunch. What’s your name?” Of course, he’s Sam Elliot so that actually works instead of sending her scurrying for the nearest police officer. They begin to date and, after twenty years, Carol rediscovers what romance feels like. While Danner’s chemistry with Martin Starr as Lloyd is charged and quirky, her work with Elliot is warm, charming, and sexy. Watching two actors as experienced and charismatic as that work together is a real pleasure.

There are some aspects of I’ll See You In My Dreams that seem a little artificial. There are times when the dialogue by writer/director Brett Haley feels very much like dialogue. It has a very writerly, scripted feel to it and made me wonder if the film was originally a stage play. It wasn’t, but it definitely has a careful, self-aware tone to it. Carol’s group of girlfriends and their antics also have a crafted, “Hey, let’s be wacky” vibe too.

I'll See You In My Dreams is unusual and refreshing, and Blythe Danner in her first leading film role in a fifty year career is worth the price of admission alone. The film can't be easily categorized, and in our age o f niche marketing, it's a pleasure to see a film that is something unexpected.  

This review  originally appears on Q90.1. Go to deltabroadcasting.org for more information.