Sad Endings: Valkyrie & Doubt & Let the Right One In & Quantum of Solace

Valkyrie joins a list of recent military movies where the hero dies or suffers trauma for a societal ideal. I start this list at 300 (death to protect Athens), next Casino Royale (torture to serve England), next The Dark Knight (Harvey Dent's disfigurement to protect Gotham), and end with Valkyrie (death to protect “sacred” Germany). Valkyrie is one of the last films released during the Bush administration. I posit that the films in my list connect to a conservative take on current American warfare, they create an analogy between a hero or heros who sacrifice themselves for their society or ideology and American soldiers, who sacrifice themselves abroad because the Bush Administration told them to do so. It disturbs me that in all of these films politics or politicians at best don't work, and at worst get in the way of the fighting man. Is this death-obsessed mythology really what we want to self-generate? On the other hand, perhaps there is some justice in eternally imprisoning Hitler, Göring and Goebbels as culture-myth demons, gargoyles whose mere appearance indicates we should hate them and their ideology.

Valkyrie is an efficient, well-crafted, likable film that directs the audience's sympathy to a projected military martyr. In this, and in its simplicity, it reminds me of nothing so much as The Song of Roland. It's interesting how much of the success of this film depends on Tom Cruise. Cruise brings a sleek intensity to the role of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg; he is at his best near the end, when the shadow of Fate crosses even his beautiful face. “No one escapes,” he tells us, black eye-patch filling the frame.

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Trying to see Waltz with Bashir, projection difficulties forced me into a showing of Doubt instead. Pleasantly round and classically beautiful, Philip Seymour Hoffman's paunch upstages both him and Meryl Streep. Third bill Amy Adams outshines them all, and not because the others aren't giving their best. I always forget Adams is Adams while watching her, instead I accept her as her character. This consumption by a part makes Adams one of the few true role-assuming actors of film, like Kirk Douglas, someone who is always a mask. This method is the exact opposite of actors like Humphrey Bogart, who never let us forget exactly who it was pulling on his own earlobe.

Self conscious use of low angles, canted angles, etc. by director/playwright John Patrick Shanley is interesting but mostly ineffective. This remains a filmed play, but an excellent one.

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The Swedish answer to George Romero's Martin, Let the Right One In continues the Vampire movie genre's fascination with ambiguous sexuality.

“What if I told you I was not a girl?”
“Do you want to go steady?”

Preteen self discovery, though, has rarely been more dark, and this film has a depth not easily plumbed. Is a film about 12 year old bloodsuckers a good idea? Or, by considering the justification for showing violence juxtaposed with children, am I asking the wrong question?

The visuals of this film contribute greatly to its success. Right One is refreshingly creative in framing and unafraid of the long take. The cold look of Fuji is the perfect format for a vampire movie set in the snow. The soft scattered light reflected off the snow occasionally gives actors and objects a halo, but, despite these occasional bright moments, this is a film that mostly lets things go completely black.

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Like a money vampire, the James Bond franchise just won't die. Quantum of Solace stars the humorless Daniel Craig, whose few jokes seem lost even on him. The plot is a politically confused mess where those who destroy the environment are threatened with rendition, and where Bond doesn't sleep with the “Bond girl” but another women is disposed of, sexually and violently, fast as ever. I liked it better when Bond tricked everyone and the ending was happy. The new Bond shoots everybody and the ending is sad.