"Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us better people."
-- Roger Ebert, The Great Movies

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Goldfinger


  • Title:  Goldfinger
  • Director:  Guy Hamilton
  • Date:  1964
  • Studio:  United Artists
  • Genre:  Action, Drama
  • Cast:  Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Gert Fröbe,  Harold Sakata, Bernard Lee, Richard Vernon, Desmond Llewelyn
  • Format:  Technicolor, Widescreen
  • DVD Format:  R1, NTSC

"This is gold, Mr. Bond, all my life I have been in love with its color, its brilliance, its divine heaviness.  I welcome any enterprise that will increase my stock."  - Goldfinger

"Do you expect me to talk?" - James Bond
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." - Goldfinger

"You can turn off the charm.  I'm immune." - Pussy Galore

Goldfinger really is the quintessential James Bond film.  Even those who aren't big fans of James Bond have likely seen it, or parts of it.  The image of a girl painted in gold, dead on a bed, and the immortal line - "Do you expect me to talk? / No, I expect you to die." have slipped into popular culture.  And it really is a good James Bond film and a good film, over all.

Goldfinger, unlike other early Bond flicks, does not feel overly long (hello, Dr. No), overly complicated, or overly boring (yeah, Thunderball, I'm looking at you).  It moves at a good clip, and the plot is easily followed.  The opening gambit takes place in Jamaica, where Bond uses some nearly laughable Really Big plastique and nitro to blow up a building.  Later he's with a girl and is attacked.  He fights the guy, hand to hand, ending with tossing his assailant into a bathtub filled with water.  The guy gets the jump on Bond, pointing his gun at him.  Bond tosses a lamp into the water, electrocuting him. "Shocking," says Bond.

Felix Lighter, Bond's contact in the CIA then shows up and gives him his assignment from MI6.  He's to keep track of a British national in Miami, by the name of Goldfinger.  Bond catches Goldfinger making money by cheating at cards, gets him to lose on purpose, and steals his girl, Jill.  However, Goldfinger kills Jill by having her painted gold.  She dies from skin suffocation.  Bond reports to MI6, where he's informed that Goldfinger is suspected of smuggling gold.  He's kitted-up with equipment by Q - in a scene that will become expected in every Bond film thereafter.

Bond is then sent to Scotland, where he discovers Goldfinger also cheats at golf - though Bond gets him back.  Bond then uses a tracking device to follow Goldfinger to Switzerland.  Bond meets a girl who is trying to kill Goldfinger.  It's Jill's sister.  The two try to get into Goldfinger's estate.  The girl is killed by Odd Job, Goldfinger's mute Korean manservant.  Bond is caught, and ends up spread-eagled on a gold table, with an industrial laser pointed at his privates.  Bond gambles, claiming to know more than he does, and is not killed.

However, he is knocked out and wakes up on a plane, meeting Goldfinger's pilot, Pussy Galore.  She goes to great pains to explain to James Bond that she is only Goldfinger's pilot, and she's not at all taken in by Bond's flirting.  The plane lands in Kentucky, at Galore's Flying Circus - where all the pilots are women.

In Kentucky, Bond discovers Goldfinger's plot.  He's gotten a group of mobsters to smuggle all the various things he needs to break into Ft. Knox.  Only one of the mobsters named Solo wants his gold million dollars rather than the promised ten million payday.  Goldfinger gives him his gold bullion, but has Odd Job kill Solo, then crush his car at a junkyard.  The crushed car is returned to Goldfinger.  Goldfinger gasses to death the rest of the mobsters.

Goldfinger's plan, however, isn't to break into Ft. Knox to steal the gold, but to irradiate it with a nuclear bomb, thus making the gold useless and making all the gold he's stored overseas even more valuable.

Galore's pilots drop nerve gas in the area around Ft. Knox - knocking everyone out.  It's eerie to see all the slumped over people, as Goldfinger heads into the building.  But Bond had convinced Galore to help - she had switched the canisters to something less deadly, and called Washington.  Bond ends-up in a hand-to-hand with Odd Job, and defeats him by electrocuting him on a fence in Ft Knox.  He barely defuses the bomb in time and it stops at:  007.  Bond sets off for Washington, DC, in a plane piloted by Galore, but Goldfinger confronts him on the plane.  During the fight, a bullet is fired, air is sucked out, Goldfinger is pushed out of the plane, and the plane starts to crash.  Bond and Galore escape by parachute and the film ends with the two in each other's arms under the parachute.

Made in 1964, Goldfinger has some huge and impressive sets, especially the Ft. Knox set, with it's vaults of gold.  This also is the quintessential James Bond film.  It has pretty girls, including the improbably-named "Pussy Galore".  It has car chases.  It has gadgets.  It has Bond's Astin Martin car.  It has the M and Q we know and love.  It stars Connery as Bond.  Goldfinger, with his German accent, and his mysterious servant Odd Job are perfect villains.  And the plot holds together and is big - really big.  I mean, break into Ft. Knox?  That's big.  But everything about Goldfinger is big - the sets, and the props in them are all huge.  It's impressive, in that sense, and even now, I wondered how they did some of the stuff they did - and marveled at the huge sets - no CGI extensions here!  However, some things in the film did seem out of date, from the huge Nitro barrels and regular (non-digital) clock detonator, and toothpaste-like plastique, to the truly really big bomb Goldfinger brings into Ft. Knox - it felt out-of date.

But one surprising thing about the film to me was Pussy Galore.  This is a woman who doesn't immediately fall for Bond.  She's feisty, and tells him she's immune to his charms.  Over and over she pushes Bond away.  And she's not with Goldfinger either - not in that way.  Galore is a pilot, a difficult profession for women today, in 2013, and virtually an impossible one for women in the early 1960s.  All the pilots in her flying circus are women as well.  Galore wears pants, trousers, and jodphurs throughout the film - we never see her in a skirt or dress.  She's a very different Bond woman.  She also knows judo, and defeats Bond once in hand-to-hand combat.  Later, they fight in a barn, and throw each other into hay.  Bond eventually gets on top of her - she resists, - he persists, and eventually she gives in.  It's after their literal "roll in the hay" that she decides to help Bond, and is crucial in defeating Goldfinger.

Looking at it now, Galore, who surrounds herself with women, and is contemptuous of men, might be a lesbian.  Yet, Bond forces himself on her, despite her cries of protest.  The scene in the barn made me squirm, because to me Bond raped Galore.  And in sexist 60s fashion, this "converted" her to be on his side.  In a sense, it nearly ruins the film for me.  At the very least, it adds an uncomfortable subtext, that Bond is not the hero he pretends to be.

Bond himself doesn't seem to be the perfect spy in Goldfinger either.  He's constantly getting beat up, caught, tied-up, and locked in cells.  He gives the impression he has no idea what Goldfinger is up to.  He doesn't care about the women he uses and sleeps with.  He's only interested in Pussy Galore because she resists him.

Still, it's a good film overall, especially if  you ignore the subtext.

Recommendation:  See it!  It is the James Bond film after all.
Rating:  4 out of  5 Stars
Next Film:  Inception

Sunday, September 1, 2013

The Great Gatsby

Warning this review includes spoilers.  If you have not seen The Great Gatsby and don't want to know the end, there are spoilers below.  You have been warned. 
  • Title:  The Great Gatsby
  • Director:  Baz Luhrmann
  • Date:  2013
  • Studio:  Warner Brothers
  • Genre:  Drama
  • Cast:  Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey MaGuire, Carey Mulligan,  Elizabeth DeBicki, Isla Fisher, Joel Edgerton
  • Format:  Color, Widescreen
  • DVD Format:  R1, NTSC
"By which I mean no one except me ever received an actual invitation to Gatsby's.  You see, the rest of  New York simply came uninvited.  The whole city packed into automobiles, and all weekend, every weekend, ended-up at Gatsby's."  - Nick, narrating

"He gives large parties and I like large parties.  They're so intimate.  Small parties, there isn't any privacy."  - Jordan

"It was also the night that I became aware of Gatsby's extraordinary gift for hope.   A gift that I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again."  - Nick

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is a stunning visual masterpiece.  The party scenes especially are reminiscent of Luhrmann's hyper-real style used to great effect in Moulin Rouge.  But where Moulin Rouge is a story about love.  The Great Gatsby really is a story of obsession.  Visually, it's an incredible film, and a must-see.  The crisp images, sweeping camera moves, editing, and color bring the viewer into the story. Again, Luhrmann uses modern music to make scenes, especially parties, feel the way they would have then. For example, Gatsby's parties are wild affairs, with a mixture of modern rap music and more traditional 1920s jazz.  At his parties, the (illegal) alcohol flows freely, and there's confetti, streamers, dancing girls, live music, drunk guests, and fireworks.  People dance, drink too much, and jump into the reflecting pool in their clothes.  It short, it's wild.  But even the smaller party at a brothel that Tom invites Nick to, in order to show off his mistress and his power and influence, is a wild party where Nick gets extremely drunk.

But not only does Luhrmann uniquely re-create the feeling of a time and place, but he tells the story of six people, all of whom become victims of obsession.  Nick Carraway narrates the story as a story he tells his therapist in a sanitarium.  Nick's from Chicago, and puts aside his dreams of being a writer to make his fortune on Wall Street.  It's his doctor who suggests he work out his issues by writing.  Nick does, and at the end of the film, he pulls the cover sheet out of his typewriter, and places it on the top of the stack of paper that will be his novel.  The typewritten title is, "Gatsby", but he adds two words by hand in pen and it becomes, The Great Gatsby.

Structurally the film actually starts and ends with the same image, a green light blinking in the distance across the water, in the darkness and mist.  This green light will represent Jay Gatsby's dream and obsession.  He met Daisy when he was a young, penniless, officer in the army at a party.  They fell in love and had an affair, but then he went off to war.  Daisy swore to wait, but Gatsby disappears.  She marries instead the very rich, very old money, and very prejudiced and sexist, George Buchanan.

Gatsby, meanwhile, has decided that in order to pursue Daisy properly, he needs to make his fortune, so he can keep her in style.  He fights in the war (World War I), attends Oxford, rescues a millionaire who's yacht nearly sinks on Lake Superior, learns to be a gentlemen, and finally ends up in New York, where he buys the mansion directly across the bay from Daisy's house.  He gives his wild parties, hoping one day she will simply show up.  Everything he's become and everything he does - Gatsby's done to impress Daisy.

Meanwhile, Tom Buchanan, Daisy's husband is a philanderer.  Even on their honeymoon, he had his way with a hotel parlour maid.  He has a mistress on the side, Myrtle, and he flaunts it.  His dinner conversation consists of putting down the new rich (like Gatsby), insisting there's an order to the world, and insulting "negros" as he calls him.  Tom is basically a bully, and he thinks his money gives him the right to treat everyone else terribly.  He wants to own Daisy, and keep her from anyone else, but it's doubtful he really loves her or Myrtle.

George is Myrtle's husband - he owns a garage in The Valley of the Ashes, a dump and coal loading station half way between West Egg and New York.  It's where New York's garbage goes.  He loves his wife, but freaks when he realizes she's been having an affair.  He's rough, and lower class and we know little about him.

Jordan is a female golfer who seems to live at the Buchanan's residence.  Daisy tries to push her together with Nick.  Their story isn't central to the film.

What is central, is the story of Gatsby and his obsession with Daisy.  Nick moves in next to Gatsby at the beginning of the summer.  Before long, he's acting as a go between for Gatsby and Daisy.  Gatsby is, at first, extremely nervous around Daisy.  But soon the two are having an affair.  Gatsby, however, insists that Daisy tell Tom she never loved him.  Daisy tries to do this but can't.  She does tell Gatsby that she loves him now, and she no longer loves Tom -- she does this in front of  Tom.

Tom doesn't take it well, and begins to repeat all the gossip and stories told about Gatsby.  There's a fight and Gatsby and Daisy leave the hotel in Gatsby's custom yellow car.  Meanwhile, George confronts Myrtle about her affair - having found a string of pearls that George gave her.  (Pearls had also been George's wedding gift to Daisy).  The two fight, and a distraught Myrtle runs into the road -- to get hit by Gatsby's yellow car.  Later, Nick learns that Daisy was driving it, rather than Gatsby.  But it's Gatsby who takes the fall.  Tom, Nick, and Jordan arrive moments later at the accident site.  Tom pretends he doesn't even know Myrtle, and hints to George that it was Gatsby having the affair with her.  He tells the police that Gatsby drives the custom yellow car that witnesses saw.

Needless to say, it doesn't end happily.  George kills Gatsby, then commits suicide.  Daisy, who had picked up the phone to call Gatsby that morning, ends up trapped in her loveless marriage to Tom.  Nick ends up in a sanitarium hopelessly addicted to alcohol.

The Great Gatsby is a terrific, stunning, gorgeous, achingly beautiful film.  The images... from the blinking green light in the mist, to the blue sign for Dr. TJ Ecklesburg looking over the Valley of Ashes, to the incredible filming of Gatsby's parties are memorable and really must be seen.  Luhrmann as a director has an excellent gift of mastery of the visual sense - and of incorporating the modern with the historic to make modern audience's truly understand what a time was like.  I originally saw this film last May on opening night, and the theater was packed.  It was a sold-out show in the largest theater at my local multiplex.  The audience was filled with people of all ages, and many of them even dressed-up in 1920s fashions.  It was more than a movie premiere -- it was an event.

However, the theme of the film isn't love.  This isn't a impossible romance.  And it's not a tragic romance either.  It's a film about obsession.  Jay Gatsby is obsessed with Daisy.  He wants to make her his wife.  He has a perfect life planned out for them in his head, and he's obsessed with doing everything he needs to do to get what he wants.  Thinking she wouldn't marry him if  he was penniless or struggling, he leaves her to marry Tom, and goes off to make his fortune.  Everything, literally everything in his huge mansion - he put together for Daisy.  His wild parties were only given in the hopes that Daisy would come.  Everything is for her and to create this image in Gatsby's head.

Tom is also obsessed - he wants to own people, like he owns things and his station in life.  He owns Daisy.  He owns Myrtle.  He owns his servants.  They may not technically be slaves, but in the way he treats people, Tom sees people as possessions, to be tossed away when they are no good.  He condemns the New Rich, and exalts his own old money class.

The Great Gatsby is similar in many ways to Moulin Rouge.  Both have a sense of hyper-reality and mix modern music and film techniques with the clothes and set dressing pieces of the past.  Both films have a writer narrating the story.  Both films have tragic endings. The Great Gatsby has a crispness and cleanness of both image and line.  There's no fantastical elements here.  There is sweeping, nearly impossible camera movements, and a use of the Art Deco colors of  black, gold, and silver.

I also found similarities between The Great Gatsby and one of my personal favorite films of all time, Sunset Blvd, directed by the Film Noir great, Billy Wilder.  Both Gatsby and Sunset Blvd are narrated by a writer.  Both are tragic stories, in Sunset Blvd a writer becomes a kept man of an aging silent film star and cannot escape her clutches, before finally being killed by her.  Though Nick Carraway escapes the excesses of Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Jordan, it isn't without cost.  But the most direct link between the two films, is they both end with the same image, a dead man, who's been shot, floating in a swimming pool.  If you haven't seen Sunset Blvd, watch it, it's a great film, but there's a visual symmetry between the shot looking upwards at a dead Joe Gillis (William Holden) in the pool, and looking up at a dead Jay Gatsby (Leonardo Dicaprio) in The Great Gatsby.

Recommendation:  See it!
Rating:  5 out of 5 Stars
Next Film:  Goldfinger