The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter is possibly the most restrained epic I've ever seen. It tells a story about war and how it can destroy lives, and about love, and is a sweeping three hours long. But there are fewer than ten characters of any real significance, and for the most part the story is contained to a small blue collar town in Pennsylvania. None of this makes it bad, it's just interesting how they decided to allot the running time to the different aspects of the story. Vietnam is the crux of the plot and all of the things that affect the main characters, but the movie probably spends less than an hour total there.

So five friends work at a steel mill, and three of them are leaving for the war soon. One of them is getting married before they ship off, and except for the groom they're all going to go deer hunting one last time after the ceremony. A bearded Robert De Niro is the one who most loves the thrill of the hunt, obsessed with bringing down the deer with one shot, and he's also in love with Meryl Streep, who happens to be in a relationship with his best friend played by Christopher Walken. And that's really everything from the first part of the story, which takes up the first hour. It then cuts quickly to Vietnam, and it's an abrupt transition from people having a good time at a wedding and on a hunting trip to people getting shot and burned alive in a war-torn village. They're captured by the enemy, and then the film introduces its infamous element of Russian Roulette. It might not be a historically accurate depiction of what happened in the war, but that hardly matters when it provides so much great material for the story. The game is an apt metaphor for the pointless, random violence of war, and is a nice way to show that without throwing too much money into huge battles. It also provides from some thrillingly intense scenes of drama.

None of the friends are killed in the war, but they are all deeply affected by their experience, and they don't all make it back to Pennsylvania. The third act is about the post-war life, and focuses mostly on De Niro. All of the central performances are great, including John Cazale's final role as one of the friends who stayed behind, and Walken's, which won him an Oscar. De Niro really holds the end of the movie together though, and without him supporting it it might not have worked. It's a complicated story where nothing is easy or black and white, and as a depiction of what trauma can do to people and how it can wreck plans and affect people who didn't even go, it's a powerful piece of filmmaking. I didn't like everything about its choices in pacing and a few other things, but still definitely deserving of its status as a great film.

The Man Who Wasn't There

The Man Who Wasn't There is the Coen brothers' take on film noir, but like all of their work, it takes its inspiration in odd new directions. Because of its dedication to the filming style of older movies, matching the same sense of pace and a lot of the standards of where to point and focus the camera, it looks very old fashioned. You can still tell it's a more recent film though, even without the recognizable collection of excellent actors and Coen veterans that make up the cast, because there's just something weird about it. They're well known for the frequent nihilism of their plots, and Billy Bob Thornton's Ed Crane is so far into this mode that the film's been compared to The Stranger by Albert Camus, the ultimate existentialist novel.

The story starts like a lot of noir plots that go wrong in a hurry, with a relatively benign criminal scam. Crane is a barber, and he suspects that his wife, played by Frances McDormand, is sleeping with her boss, performed by James Gandolfini. After a customer tells him about his scheme to get rich with a new idea known as dry cleaning, Crane decides to make some money, and maybe get even while he's at it (although he really seems like he doesn't care that much about the affair), so he anonymously blackmails Gandolfini into leaving him the money to keep quiet. As expected though, things go very wrong, and people start dropping dead. Some bits are more predictable than others, but they do a good job of keeping things interesting, and things get a lot weirder after a certain point, eventually culminating in an ending that sort of feels like a fever dream that's actually happening.

It's an interesting story propped up further by the stellar look of the film (it was actually filmed in color and converted later to a beautiful black and white) and the outstanding performances by everyone involved. A lot of actors doing disaffected can just come off bored, but Thornton has mastered the art form. You really get inside his head and see what he does and doesn't care about (mostly he doesn't, you get the feeling that he truly doesn't mind the adultery and just tries the blackmail because he thinks it will work) with him having to say very little outside the narration. Gandolfini has to convey a lot of moods in not very many scenes and does it well, McDormand is just right for what the Coens are doing as usual, and Tony Shalhoub's lawyer is the perfect scumbag opportunist. Richard Jenkins and Scarlett Johannson are a father and daughter that don't have a lot of screen time, but Jenkins is excellent as a weary drunk and Johannson plays well off Thornton as the one thing he seriously seems concerned with. There are a lot of Coen trademarks, such as sudden and shocking bursts of violence and using similar imagery for scene transitions, but in some ways it's also unique for them, more restrained than usual and dedicated to matching the style they were after. They're still my favorite filmmakers, and this is one of their most intriguing projects.

The Green Mile

The Green Mile is a good movie trying very hard to be a great one. It's Frank Darabont's second film from the 90s, and like The Shawshank Redemption, it is a period drama set mostly in a prison in early 20th century America, featuring a bond that forms between a white man and a black man, and based on a story by Stephen King. It also features a strong cast, and is undeniably well made even if you don't like the story. The film has an extremely stately pace and feel, almost to excess, and tugs very hard on your emotions, although it's not quite the same as Shawshank. One of the biggest reasons is that the plot actually has a supernatural element, one that would actually qualify the film as a kind of fantasy story, and one that I imagine would greatly surprise anyone who came into watching it blind, especially since this element doesn't actually surface until a full hour into the film. A lot of things are like that though, since it's three hours long when the story seems like it could have been told in two. I wouldn't say it was too long exactly, or that it ever really got boring, I just don't see what the benefit was to giving every single bit of story as much time as the producers would physically allow to develop.

So Tom Hanks is in charge of death row at a prison. Most of the prisoners are decent guys who did wrong, but the two that get brought in after the movie begins are different. Michael Clarke Duncan is a saintly giant, the ultimate version of the magical negro. Sam Rockwell is a deranged, freakish bastard. Hanks is the boss of several recognizable faces as the other guards, who are mostly good men like he is, except for Doug Hutchison's character, a privileged piece of shit with family connections who wants to watch a couple crooks fry before transferring to a better paying job. Sam Cromwell plays the warden, and Patricia Clarkson is his wife dying of a brain tumor. Those are pretty much all the pieces that will be shuffled around, as the guards learn more about Duncan's abilities and realize why he ended up getting sentenced to death for the rape and murder of two young girls. The acting is good all around, especially the two leads, with Hanks' weariness over what his job is doing to him and Duncan's otherworldly innocence, despite the stereotypical nature of the character. It really is a well produced film, and I liked the mixture of fantasy bits with an old fashioned southern drama. But it seems like the kind of thing I'd struggle mightily to ever watch again, and the whole movie is quite possibly just a bit up its own ass. Still, I liked it.

Sons of Anarchy - Season 3

Not everyone has seemed to like Sons' third season as much as the first two, but personally I enjoyed it a lot. It probably helped that I ended up watching most of it very quickly, only managing to catch the final two episodes on their original air dates, which helped smooth over any pacing issues. And I can understand where people's problems lie. The show isn't perfect, occasionally having to warp believable plotting or character decisions a bit to accomplish a necessary task in the story in a limited time. And with how rarely I actually enjoy tumultuous romantic relationships in television, I really didn't like how they shoehorned in some of that drama here because they apparently felt it was still necessary. But for the most part I really had fun with this season, and especially its willingness to change location for a while.

It probably takes them at least an episode or two too long to get there, but the most important thing to happen this season was the gang's excursion to Ireland, which has story effects both immediate and otherwise. Obviously they have an immediate reason to be there, but it also becomes clear that the thing that's been hanging over this entire series, what really happened to Jax's father, is heavily influenced by the gang's previous time in the country. The shift in setting for a bit brings a shift in style, including a really cool redone theme song over the opening credits, and I liked how the show spent a bit of time with the main characters out of their element and let us in on how some of the other criminals in its world live. The Irish side of things was interesting enough that I feel like it could even sustain its own show, although probably not one with quite the same audience as Sons of Anarchy.

Ireland is really just part of the season though, as of course there's plenty of other stuff going on constantly for the characters to worry about. It wouldn't be Sons if things weren't just one second away from blowing up in everyone's faces. It culminates in the finale when a ton of plot threads that have built up over most of the show's run come together in one of my favorite sequences on television this year, offering a moment of pure fun and surprise that most shows don't attempt. Season two ended on a major cliffhanger and season three felt like a continuation of it more than its own entity a lot of the time, so I liked that they closed off a lot of things here, while also providing a definite direction for the fourth. I expect them to jump forward in time at least a bit this time, but it's hard to really say with this show. How much time has actually passed? Maybe a year? Not that it really matters, but the characters probably need a few moments to breathe at this point.