CYRUS

by Gordon

Directed by: Mark & Jay Duplass

Released: 2010

Rating: R [language and some sexual material]

Runtime: 92 min.

Main Cast: John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei, Catherine Keener

Rotten Tomatoes: 79%                    IMDB: 7.3/10

 

   Cyrus may pass itself off as a comedy, but in actuality it’s at least as much of a heartfelt romance. As a sole comedy it would fall far short. Really, it’s not perfectly successful as either genre. But for falling somewhere in the middle, and in a style that does a good job of blending mainstream with independent filmmaking (and point of view), it is fairly successful.

   It’s a familiar story: Guy named John down on his luck (Reilly) meets girl of his dreams named Molly (Tomei). They fall in love. But her reluctant son, Cyrus (Hill) does all he can to thwart their romantic advances. The fact that a man as ugly as John C. Reilly could be paired with a woman as pretty as Marisa Tomei is a little far-fetched in itself, but even moreso considering she’s the one to make the first move. But the idiosyncratic tendencies that Hill brings to his character really help the story become much more unique and many times hilarious. Some may call the guy an overrated one-trick-pony, a criticism I can understand, but for me, perhaps solely due to his Superbad days, even his quiet moments (and even expressionless faces) make me laugh.

   The story wraps up a little bit quicker than its potential might have allowed, with a runtime of just an hour and a half. And that’s including a less-than-necessary backstory where we follow John’s progressive visits to his recently engaged ex-girlfriend, played by Catherine Keener, while looking for advice over his new relationship’s predicaments. She’s great in her role, but most of her scenes unfortunately only distract. On the upside, Tomei, though I’ve always found something unexplainably annoying about her, continues to prove that she’s a great actress.

   The indie style by directors Mark and Jay Duplass, dubbed “mumblecore”, is a bit raw and amateur at times, but at others serves to accentuate the scene’s emotion, moreso than standard Hollywood filmmaking might have achieved. And editing props to a few scenes in particular where dialogue on top of montage imagery did well to express the feeling of a night or the mood of a relationship, while not veering far from chronological.

   A light and semi-cheery soundtrack accompanies the more tender moments of the film, while breaking up the more satirical, humorous exchanges between Reilly and Hill. And it’s this same heartwarming note that’s exhibited for the film’s final scene, contrary to some level of expectation that the funny war between son and new boyfriend will continue up to the end. But the nice, small package that the ending actually signifies shouldn’t be too much shunned. This hybrid from the Duplass brothers, though at times as outrageous as a movie like the similarly-themed Step Brothers, manages to stay tame enough and realistic enough to leave its own lingering impression where some others have not been so successful.

   Probably my favorite scene: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid16829217001?bctid=79853181001

IN THE BEDROOM

by Gordon

Directed by: Todd Field

Released: 2002

Rating: R [some violence and language]

Runtime: 130 min.

Main Cast: Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Nick Stahl, Marisa Tomei

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%                    IMDB: 7.5/10

 

   After seeing Field’s 2006 Little Children, I had to see his first and only other major picture, In the Bedroom. I’m not sure how seeing these two in reverse order affected my experience. It certainly made the expectations higher (an unfair disadvantage that would have come true for whichever movie I saw after). While I wasn’t gripped with the same intensity of curiosity from scene to scene as I had been with Little Children, it did touch on a number of subtly emotional nerves, made more impressive by the film being Field’s first full-length motion picture. David Ansen of Newsweek wrote, “Todd Field exhibits a mastery of his craft many filmmakers never acquire in a lifetime. With one film he’s guaranteed his future as a director. He has the magnificent obsession of the natural-born filmmaker.”

   The story’s setting in Mid-Coast Maine certainly contributed to a degree of positive bias I held while watching its characters live and breathe in the serene, willowy landscape that I myself have warmly embraced every summer through the fortune of multiple family cottages. It was a perfect backdrop to Thomas Newman’s beatifully understated soundtrack.

   The film’s initial focus is that of the romance between the young Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) and the older Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei), separated from her husband Richard (an abusive and violent William Mapother) and with two young children. Frank was planning to apply to graduate school for architecture, but starts to consider continuing in the fishing industry at home to be near Natalie. Both of Frank’s parents (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek) secretly worry for the direction of their son, but take comfort in the joy he finds in Natalie and her kids, as well as his defense that their relationship is “just a summer thing”.

   On the sidelines, and not happy at all with the blossoming romance between his wife and the young Frank, is Richard, whose surprise visits and angry lashes of violence directed at both Frank and Natalie come to the alarm of Frank’s parents, though Frank assures them that things will blow over. But after responding to a call from Natalie that Richard’s trashed her house, the two are dismayed to find the angry Richard returning. Natalie is told to go upstairs with the kids, Frank trying to keep Richard out downstairs. His efforts prove unsuccessful, however, and Frank never makes it out of the house again.

   The news is devastating for Frank’s parents, both of whom deal with the tragedy in their own ways, she making her grief more obvious, and him trying his best to get back to a sense of normalcy both in life and in their relationship. The tension between them comes to a head one day in the house, both of them losing their tempers in an emotional display that alone could have earned them the Academy Award nominations they both received for Best Actor and Actress. The confrontation, however, helps bring the two closer and find a more mutual clarity about how to handle their son’s killer, Richard, who was out on bail and only expected to receive 5 to 15 years in prison following his trial.

   The resulting conclusion, played out with chilling anticipation, finds Frank’s father taking justice into his own hands, the kind he believes the courts can never offer him or his wife. He finds Richard leaving the bar where he works one night, and at gunpoint instructs him to drive to his house. The forthcoming attempt at vengeance and its following mental effects (or lack thereof) become the basis for the film’s final tone.

   In many respects it’s a straightforward story of interest and drama, a tragedy at heart, one of human conflict and attempted resolution, and one that Field artfully visualizes through careful dialogue and symbolism, William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer praising his direction for feeling “both highly controlled and effortlessly spontaneous at the same time.” In an early scene, Frank’s father teaches one of Natalie’s boys about lobster traps, alluding to the film’s title, which refers to the rear compartment of the trap and how it can only hold up to two lobsters before they begin to turn on each other. Holding up a lobster missing a claw to the boy, he says, “You get more than two of these in the bedroom, and chances are something like that’s gonna happen.”