Capote

The verdict:A great lead performance, but the movie lacks real depth overall. Ultimately unrewarding.

The rating: 6/10


Sometimes it's a wise to avoid the lascivious lure of movie marketing men, and simply sidestep the decision to view a 'big' film around the time it's released. PCMR would like to claim such wisdom in this case, but in reality, although my initial reaction to Capote's release might not have involved chomping at the bit, I just didn't get around to watching it 'til now! (Useless - Ed)

I should probably describe 'Capote' as 'big' under advisement, as it was essentially made independently, and executive produced by Hoffman himself, but it generated sufficient 'buzz' - that most ephemeral and sought-after of commodities in the movie industry – to garner multiple academy award nominations and universal recognition for Philip Seymour Hoffman in the titular lead role of Truman Capote.

However, the point I would make here is that buzz is often off the mark. Think 'Star Wars Episode I', 'Snakes on a Plane', the much vaunted '300', and now also possibly even Tarantino's 'Grindhouse'? (Wow, getting on to dodgy ground there! – Ed).

In the case of a biopic such as this, there is a well-trodden path towards Oscar-worthiness, and as long as there is technical expertise on show, you can bet your barnet that the biopic will be in the running for gongs come Oscar night. True to form, Capote was nominated for four, including best picture. Catherine Keener deserved her nod for a great supporting turn as Harper Lee, and Hoffman undoubtedly deserved his for a great performance, but best director and best picture? Methinks the academy were a little swept up in the 'buzz' two years ago.

However... in this context, I'd still have to say that technically at least, Capote is a good movie. It’s a well-constructed, well-acted ensemble piece with particularly strong performances from Hoffman and Keener, an intelligent script, believable, rounded characters and some beautifully colourful vistas of Kansas in wintertime.

It's just the story that lets it down for me. I mean, on the surface, it's straight-forward enough: Capote is stuck for direction on his next novel, hears of a series of grisly murders in Kansas, and sets about interviewing one the prime suspects. The product of these interviews was a certain novel called In Cold Blood... So with a straight-forward narrative such as this, you would expect there to be a lot more going on under the surface, right? Well, you may be disappointed.. Truman Capote was certainly an interesting, if unstable character. In the movie, his attempts to be all things to all people could be interpreted a number of ways: either he is duplicitous, emotionally insecure, or some combination of the two.

The lead role is superbly played by Hoffman, but my main problem with the character was simply that he was not particularly likeable. Capote is portrayed as intelligent, but more in the sense of being manipulative and self-serving than philanthropic. The means by which he extracts the interviews from the alleged killers in the murder case, and then simply exploits this information for his own benefit - not before taking to bed for a day or to due to the stress of it all, does not warm him to the audience on any human level. Also, the end of the film leaves us in some doubt as to whose blood the title of Capote's novel refers...

I have to say, not being aware of Capote’s work – aside from having seen 'Beat the Devil', a rather lacklustre Bogie movie he co-wrote – I was not inspired by the movie version of his life to learn any more about the man. An interesting character, sure, but perhaps the man had more interesting chapters in his life to put on the silver screen.

Overall, I was left with the feeling that what was on show in Capote was beautiful in it’s own way, but that this beauty only ran skin-deep. Oscar-worthiness doesn’t always mean a great movie… (on the other hand perhaps Capote suffered from being viewed only two nights after PCMR watched 'The Life of Others' – Ed)

... As is often the case with the movie industry, it is very difficult to put together a project without finding some other crew attempting to ride on your coat-tails, putting out an eerily similar movie within a few months of your own. Having personally witnessed a Celebrity Deathmatch between The Prestige and The Illusionist, PCMR now declares Capote to be up against the allegedly superior 'Infamous', released last year, and featuring Sigourney Weaver, Gwyneth Paltrow, and a certain Daniel Craig. Perhaps I’ll hold back from condemning Capote too much until I see Infamous, but on its own merits, I didn’t particularly warm to this movie.

Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

The verdict: Genius (and you can verify that I haven’t said that too often in reviews). A beautifully crafted story. This is heavyweight cinema.
The rating: 9/10

I have never seen the problem with subtitled movies, and to this day it baffles me that people who claim to enjoy cinema could deprive themselves of what could prove to be the most enjoyable of experiences, simply because of the requirement to read sub-titles. The Bruce Lee videos I watched as a kid are among my earliest memories of movies, and the comical translation of the subtitles was part of that whole experience. Fast forward to today, and I can safely say that some of the best I have seen in the last ten years have been subtitled.

Two years ago, Michael Haneke's 'Caché' completely blew me away, but that could not be nominated for the best Foreign Language Oscar, because Haneke's first language is German, and the film was made in French with a French production company. 'Downfall' was also a German production, and in PCMR's view, ranks as one of the best movies of the decade so far. Last year, 'Pan's Labyrinth' was an absolute must see, and managed to scoop a couple of Oscar nods to boot. Also in 2006, 'Indigènes' and 'The Life of Others' – shot in French/Arabic and German respectively, were both nominated for best Foreign Language movie, and in PCMR’s book, display a level of quality that should really justify putting them in the "Best Picture" category.

For many, 'subtitled' evokes 'arthouse', and for some that's a problem. However, Asian movies too have enjoyed renewed success in Europe and the US of late, with the 'Asia Extreme' series gaining a greater notoriety lately than simply 'cult'. (Which generally just means 'crap' – Ed). Movies like 'Oldboy' and 'Battle Royale' are recognised by critics and viewers alike as pushing the boundaries of what cinema can do, challenging audiences while providing genuinely exhilarating entertainment.

So why does the anti-subtitles lobby prevail? Well, I'm baffled to be honest. I can think of another reason why I like foreign movies, and in a last attempt to win over this camp, I'll refer to Terminator 2, one of my all time favourite Hollywood actioners. I don't know if you remember the device, as it seems ludicrous now, but James Cameron attempted to fool the audience in this movie. He wanted us to believe in the famous slow-mo 'guns and roses' scene, where both terminators have the young John Connor trapped in the mall, that Arnie was a bad guy. I mean, come on, by that stage we all knew Arnie was the hero, and this is the problem with a lot of Hollywood movies. Generally, we recognize the star (read 'hero') the English or French character actor (read 'bad guy') and the female lead (read 'love interest'). This recognition adds a level of predictability to Hollywood movies that only the best in the business can manage to overcome.

With 'The Lives of Others' and many other foreign movies, this recognition and predictability is notably absent. Our protagonist is agent Wiesler, played brilliantly by the gaunt, ghostly Ulrich Mühe. Wiesler is an East German Stasi (secret police) agent in East Berlin in 1984, and head of a surveillance outfit. He’s a very unlikely hero, it has to be said, and his boss, the political animal, even less so. Collectively they are working for the odious minister for culture, who is looking to uncover incriminating information on a famous playwright, and use this for his own political gains.

Wiesler begins close and complete surveillance on Dreyman the playwright (Sebastian Koch) and his partner Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck), and the couple's lives could not be more in contrast to his own. While they are artists, creative professionals, he is a repressed, solitary man, a skilled secret police interrogator, and seemingly devoid of emotion, focussed on the job of finding any subversive element that may threaten the regime of the DDR.

However, Culture Minister Hempf (Thomas Thieme) – who is now ranked in PCMRs upper echelons of cinematic bad guys – makes a telling comment near the beginning of the movie. He points out to the playwright that although in his art he continually asserts that people can change, in reality they simply can't. This challenge – the view of the repressive culture minister – is at the core of this movie.

In 1984, Glasnost was just an inkling of an idea. Gorbachev was elected to power in the USSR that year, and a few short years later, the Berlin wall came down. Thus, the powers of the East German regime are fading in the context of this movie. The McCarthyist tendencies of the government to witch-hunt anti-establishment elements has by 1984 gone too far, and people are living in constant fear of the Stasi, who repress popular culture, and claim scalps as political currency. The impact this political regime has on the lives of people is brilliantly evoked by 'The Lives of Others' and we are effortlessly immersed in the culture and atmosphere of that time.

In another telling moment, Dreyman the playwright bashes out a piece of music on his piano, and recites a quote from Lenin. "If I kept listening to Beethoven, I wouldn’t have time for the revolution." Dreyman believes that no-one who truly hears this music could be a bad person. Meanwhile, the Stasi Agent Wiesler is in the attic, tuned in to the music and the conversation through his surveillance microphones...

This movie is considered, dramatic, and packs a real emotional punch. The performances are all subtly evoked, and the ending is as near perfect as I have seen.

Don't think of 'The Life of Others' as a sub-titled movie, think of it quite simply as a great movie. If you have a phobia of subtitles, perhaps this will not be the one to get you past that, but just think of all the movies you’ve enjoyed with subtitles ('Amelie', 'Crouching Tiger'..) and possibly make an exception in this case.

It may be a little intellectual for some peoples' tastes, but this is a really smart, dramatic stuff, and PCMR gives it a hearty recommendation.

The Last King of Scotland

When Kate Winslet appeared in 'Extras', she turned in a delightfully wicked performance, but in one of her more despicably prescient observations, she conspiratorially points out to jobbing actor Ricky Gervais that the surest way to win an oscar is to "play a mental." The words of Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, however laconic, have a real ring of truth about them. Daniel Day Lewis won an Oscar for 'My Left Foot', and Dustin Hoffman picked up the gong for 'Rainman' in performances playing disabled characters, and both of these performances garnered almost universally positive critical and audience reaction. Anthony Hopkins could arguably been seen to have played another kind of 'mental' when he picked up the plaudits, and the statuette for playing Lecter in 'the Silence of the Lambs.'

However, the military biopic has thrown up a few eccentric characters of its very own, which one could argure fall into the 'mental' genre. George C. Scott turned in a barnstorming performance in 'Patton', as the legendarily eccentric military genius, and he too won an oscar (even if he neglected to accept it). It seems even playing a despotic tyrant can garner an actor critical praise and endear him/her to a large audience. When 'Der Untergang' or 'Downfall' portrayed Adolf Hitler as a nuanced, human character for the first time ever a in German movie recently, the movie received huge critical acclaim, and picked up numerous awards at ceremonies across the world. And with good reason, for the performance of Bruno Ganz is truly excellent.

These larger-than-life characters provide a rich source of material for a capable actor, but for the actor looking to play Idi Amin, there is a pre-packaged character study of the man available in Barbet Schroeder's Idi Amin Dada, a fly-on-the-wall documentary filmed in the early 1970's. In a misguided attempt to improve his public image, Amin gave unprecedented access to the film crew, and even recorded the soundtrack to the movie on his accordion. Perhaps Amin was trying to show the world the 'real' Idi Amin but, whether the image of the man protrayed in Schroeder's film is representative of the real Amin or not, it is debatable whether this image corresponded with the picture Amin had of himself.

Head of a military dictatorship in Uganda in the 1970's, Idi Amin was responsible for the dispappearance or death of around 300,000 Ugandan people over the course of his time in power. Schroeder's documentary portrays a charismatic and intelligent, yet erratic and unpredictable man, his rule based on the creation of a climate of fear and apprehension of a larger than life leader, in possession of both tremendous power and an all-encompassing paranoia. This is the kind of character that Forest Whitaker is charged with bringing to life in The Last King of Scotland.

Forest Whitaker has been kicking around Hollywood for some time, but my first real memory of him was playing the outspoken military aide to Robin Williams in the memorable 'Good Morning Vietnam'. Although Whitaker played straight to William's funny guy, he displayed an uncanny presence opposite the manic comedian. Roles followed in a sequence of mostly forgettable movies, but Whitaker has popped up every now and again in more high profile movies, and regularly demonstrates an emotional intensity in roles such as the empath in the rather poor 'Species', and in the best movie I've seen him in, Jim Jarmusch's 'Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai'. In 'Ghost Dog', Whitaker really shone, and delivered a memorable performance, showing his chops as a leading man. However, Ghost Dog aside, Whitaker has never really got the role to allow him to play to his strengths, and appearing in possibly the worst ever large scale Hollywood production, a certain 'Battlefield Earth' didn't really help his career much.

In his portrayal of Idi Amin, however, Forest Whitaker has delivered a very powerful performance. Amin is a complex character: personable, charismatic, paranoid and dangerous in equal measures, and real range is required to effectively portray all these elements of the man in a credible way. In my book, however, he pulls it off, and Oprah Winfrey agrees, having recently recommended Whitaker as her favourite for the oscar. Now, you may scoff, but Oprah's influence over the Oscars should not be underestimated. A card-carrying and voting member of the Academy, Winfrey started her career as an actress, and recieved an oscar nomination for a supporting role in 'The Color Purple'. And, lest you forget, Oprah wields an unprecedented level of power in the american entertainment industry, her legions of acolytes regularly bending to her will. When it comes to her book club, a recommendation can mean the difference between obscurity and a best-seller for an author. In terms of movies, and the Oscars in particular, Oprah's recommendation can result in a groundswell of popular opinion, just the kind of platform to lead to more academy votes for a given movie. So fingers crossed for Forest..

However, Whitaker's enigmatic performance in the movie isn't the only element to like about 'Last King of Scotland'. James McAvoy too delivers a very sound performance as Nicholas Larrigan, the young Scottish Doctor who travels to Uganda and befriends Idi Amin, after a chance meeting under unlikely circumstances. McAvoy is the main protagonist of the movie, and befriends Amin principally because of the despot's love for Scotland, but also because the two share a similarly impulsive and outspoken personality.

This unlikely friendship leads to an invitation to become Amin's personal physician, so McAvoy moves to Kampala, and forges closer ties with the charismatic general. However, as the plot develops, Larrigan becomes less and less comfortable with the goings-on under Amin's rule, and begins to realise that he my be in over his head.

McAvoy's performance is quietly effective, for he too has a lot to work with in the movie. His cocksure naivete in the film's opening scenes gradually gives way to an increasing desperation and the young Scot handles the role very well.

The action moves along at a fair pace, and although the plot is at times a little chaotic, the ominous presence of Whitaker is never too far away, and his scenes add exactly the right amount of tension to keep the audience fairly immersed in the plot. Even when not on screen, Whitaker is referred to constantly, effectively building a larger than life image of the character that the real man obviously engendered during his despotic tenure in Uganda's seat of power.

A relatively inexperienced director, Kevin MacDonald had previously helmed the award-winning documentary 'Touching The Void'. However, though his recreation of Idi Amin's Uganda in the 1970's is an entirely different prospect, he makes a very good fist of it, and as the archive footage shown in the closing credits confirms, recreates a picture that was quite close to the reality of the time.

The dialogue is always sharp and intelligent, and allows the two leads a lot of room to demonstrate their capabilities. There are some quite violent scenes in here too, however, and one scene in particular may require sick bags to be provided in cinemas showing this, so be prepared!

So, it's a good story, with two very talented lead actors, and a particularly outstanding performance from Forest Whitaker. Despite the fact that creative liberties were taken with the story (Larrigan's character in particular) and that there are a couple of holes in the plot, notably in the final scenes, 'The Last King of Scotland' is definitely worth a look. Forest may just have inadvertently heeded Kate Winslet's advice, so let's see now if Oprah's recommendation can make a difference to his prospects of picking up the gong come Oscar night. In my book, that's where the smart money's going.


The verdict: Intense and enthralling, with powerful performances from the two leads, Whitaker in particular is excellent.
The rating: 7/10