Charlie Wilson's War & I Am Legend

Charlie Wilson's War is how Aaron Sorkin would like America to see itself. Me, I just don't know—history feels too complicated for an hour and a half. (For an interesting alternative take, see here.) As mythology by which to understand our goals, however, America could do a lot worse. At least Sorkin does it better than Oliver Stone. Wilson's War has a lot of talent behind it, and it's entertaining and, I suppose, somewhat thought provoking. Let's kill some Reds!

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I Am Legend is how I like my religion—from the gut. Legend is apocalyptic in the biblical tradition. It turns out we're all going to be saved by the blood of a Christ-like Will Smith. (Jesus is Black!) Legend has more in common with M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, another genre bender religious product, than with a film like 28 Days Later, which was both more self-conscious and more aware of the limitations and potential of a genre that edges so close to farce. Nevertheless, Legend gets the job done with something close to economy and precision.

Atonement

The best of Hollywood studio product, and what's wrong with that? Atonement knows all the postmodern tricks: how to play with time, cinema within cinema, how to toy with narrative conventions and audience expectations, etc. These techniques aren't so new anymore, but here they click together well. The mixed ending, screenplay based on a book, and tricky camera work taste a little like watered down Stanley Kubrick, but Joe Wright's Atonement never has the bite of a Kubrick film, and it's never as good as good Kubrick. We can hope for more. People almost always gain money very easily in most Hollywood cinema, but Atonement departs from this in its extreme consciousness of class. James McAvoy looks good as the poor boy Robbie Turner, especially when he wears a little makeup, but I think I preferred him as the more scrappy Dr. Nicholas Garrigan in The Last King of Scotland. Kiera Knightly has never been better, nor more boyish. Surprisingly so-so as a date movie, though my girlfriend did hold my hand when I teared up.

My Favorite Trick of Cinema

Ahh .. The Castro Theatre. (Heart!) I like your movie palace style. I had an absolutely wonderful time with you when you showed a series of Charlie Chaplin films over the past few weeks. Let's do PFA at the Castro again soon. Love, Jesse.

Seeing Chaplin's films I'm always struck by the way he moves. It's telling that Edmund Wilson wrote a ballet for Chaplin (Chaplin declined, stating he only performed his own material), for few scenes in cinema history are more balletic than a bowler hatted Tramp skating backwards figure 8s inches away from a deadly fall off a precipice, but completely unaware of the danger, because he is blindfolded. Then, once the blindfold comes off and the Tramp sees the danger he is in, he becomes comically unable to skate, but Chaplin's inability to skate also looks like a kind of ballet. That scene comes from Modern Times, but a similar effect can be seen in Gold Rush, where the Tramp dances with forks stuck in potatoes to mimic feet. The Tramp could be an icon of pure performance. Though it is a little strange to call it art when Chaplin smiles and bats his eyes like an ingenue, such is cinema.

Physical comedy isn't wholly absent from modern cinema, but it is now typically linked to dialogue. The most direct examples I can think of are Steve Martin in The Jerk and John Belushi in Blues Brothers. Both dress funny and move funny, but while also talking funny. Chaplin did make dialogue films, mostly political satires that are never as consistently lyrical as the best of his silents, though many of them are important. In particular, The Great Dictator with its sometimes funny, sometimes deeply disturbing mélange of slapstick and fascism, is a white knight, a gesture against fascism and demagoguery that still affected the audience I saw it with.

Chaplin wasn't solely a kinesthetic genius (though plotting was never his strong point). He had a remarkable ability to delay a punch-line just long enough. Tragedy sometimes infused his work, allowing a glimpse into the underpinnings of his comedy. In Gold Rush, there's a memorable shot of the Tramp, forgotten by romance, outside in the cold snow, looking in at a New Years Party, literally and metaphorically an outsider. Chaplin could also be crass, like in Modern Times when the Tramp snorts cocaine, or, anticipating the work of Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles, when the Tramp and a preacher's wife sit in a waiting room, both farting, in distress, and pretending not to notice anything amiss. Contrastingly, the Tramp was also a character who sought grace and elegance in an ugly world. In the short film Payday, the Tramp, late for work, hands his brutish forman a beautiful lily, as if that is all the explanation or justification his tardiness needs.

But the greatest thing Chaplin ever did was to allow artifice to push past itself. (This is my favorite trick of cinema.) That what's left mirrors our best desires doesn't diminish anything. In The Kid, the Tramp and the kid look out at the audience, their expressions wide-eyed and identical. In City Lights, virtue and kindness earn affection. The two wandering souls in Modern Times live by their wits, one step ahead of The Man, and, in the end, they have only each other.