Before we begin, thanks to Ledger Domain’s Ed Cunard for lending me his copy of Casablanca. Just a few more to watch till I get off his shit list. Oh, what a day that will be!

Casablanca is an example of what film can do when the people involved want to make a good film. The story begins in “Rick’s”, a saloon in neutral 1942 Morocco that serves a diverse clientèle, including French refugees waiting for escape, Nazi officials, and thieves who take bribes from either side. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) Blaine claims neutrality (”I don’t stick out my neck for nobody.”) until old flame Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) Lund arrives with husband Victor (Paul Henreid) Laszlo. Victor, it turns out, is an influential leader in the resistance movement and his only way out of Casablanca is controlled by Rick. The rest of the story so intricately developed that I can’t do it justice in this short space, so let’s get on to what makes it good and I’ll pick up some details along the way.

There is a lot of good humor in this film. Lots of good one liners, often from Captain Renault, a regular source of wit (”It is a little game we play. They put it on the bill, I tear up the bill. It is very convenient.”). The writers, Julius and Philip Epstein with Howard Koch, seemed to know when the tension was threatening to overwhelm the audience and slipped a chuckle in perfectly.

Michael Curtiz (Director) played an interesting trick near the beginning of the film, one that I almost didn’t notice. He starts in the chaotic, angry marketplace, then moved to the relative easy mood of Rick’s. The film continues like this for 15 or 20 minutes until suddenly Ugarte is arrested and police flood the place, shots firing wildly. Then, as quickly as the police came, they go, leaving behind the understanding that everything about Rick’s, about Casablanca for that matter, is an illusion. There is horror always there, buried just below the surface.

The characters are inhabited, of course, by an all-star cast, and it’s a good thing. The complexity of the relationships got so confusing that at one point I stopped the DVD to make sure I had everybody’s motivation right. The love triangle (between Rick, Ilsa, and Victor) itself was startling. Through the course of the film, it grew into a triangle of duty rather than love, a development that surprised the characters almost as much as me.

So yes, this is a wonderful film. That’s not to say that the film is perfect, of course. Getting past zeitgeist is difficult at times. For example, racism is alive and well in Casablanca, proved by the heroine calling Sam “boy”, or the fact that he’s the only employee to call Rick “Boss”, or the nature of his relationship with Rick. Curtiz takes time to point out that Rick isn’t racist, but it doesn’t quite ring true. Still, for the time, treating Sam (Dooley Wilson) in this manner was a major step. Nothing happens overnight, I suppose.

To continue with a few tiny complaints, holy cow, did they ever over-score movies in the 1940s. It isn’t that the music was inappropriate in tone, it was just so loud to the point of being obnoxious. The only respite we had were when the band was playing (and wow could they play).

I wish they had introduced the Bulgarians and the point of their presence in the film with more subtlety. It’s almost as if they put a neon sign over the girl. Mind, the couple was necessary to the story, and I liked the resolution at the roulette wheel. I just wish they could have hidden the seams a bit better.

There’s so much more positive than negative, though. The dueling anthems was a stroke of genius to begin with, and Paul Henreid’s performance drew it above even that. Henreid also had several well-delivered speeches. The first time Rick sees Ilsa in the saloon was magic. I stopped the DVD and replayed it a few times to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, but the right corner of Rick’s mouth quivers just slightly when he sees her. What a subtle bit of performance. Ingrid Bergman is divine, conveying Ilsa’s public face covering her confusion as one would expect from Ingrid Bergman.

Casablanca is a wonderful film. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. If you have seen it, maybe it’s time to see it again.

Season 9, Natural Born Kissers

Also:

Season 3, Bart’s Friend Falls in Love

Season 7, Much Apu About Nothing

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This is Matt. He hates handwritten signs in gas stations, pithy sayings on church marquees, and the small nick in his windshield that is directly in front of his right eye when he is driving. Matt likes removing the UPC sticker from new books, barn swallows that dance around him in the sky while he mows his lawn, and taking his shoes and socks off after work and wiggling his toes.

Today’s movie is Amélie, a French film released in 2001. It’s the story of a shy waitress (Amélie Poulain) in a Montmartre café. After anonymously returning a long-lost childhood treasure to a former occupant of her apartment and seeing its effect on him, she sets out on a mission to give joy to others and in the process discovers how she needs to give joy to herself.

First things first: this is a foreign language film. It’s subtitled, which I sometimes find to be distracting, but in this case I honestly didn’t notice it after the first twenty minutes or so. I’m a sucker for a good Director’s commentary, and in the commentary for Amélie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet mentions that he thought they did a pretty good job translating. Maybe 15% of nuances in the language are lost, but C’est la vie, you know?

With that out of the way, allow me to say that the film is, in a word, magnificent. Such joyous exploration of the possibilities in life. It begins with an unseen narrator describing the likes and dislikes of Amélie and many of the people who would affect her early life. My favorite is the dipping of her hand in sacks of grain. Speaking from experience, that’s something everybody should do at least once.

Audrey Tautou, in the role of Amélie, is charming. I wonder if the film would have been nearly as good with anyone else in the role. Mathieu Kassovitz did a marvelous job giving us a potential love interest who could match Amélie’s wit and quirky nature. The story has them indirectly engaging each other for much of the film, and when they do meet, it’s magic.

There is an unusually large supporting cast, and oddly enough, none of them are indulgent. All are necessary to tell the greater story, all of their little bits of story dovetail quite nicely into Amélie’s quest. For example, we have neighbor Madeline Wallace, whose husband left her for another woman and then died unexpectedly 30 years ago. Her apartment (what beautiful set dressing) confesses the life she’s lived since his death; cold, mournful, unchanged as she waits for the metaphorical other shoe to drop. He was the love of her life (she has the letters to prove it) and his betrayal struck a blow at her spirit. But before she had a chance to recover, to make peace with conflict of her feelings, he died, leaving her in a state of limbo. With him (and his mistress) gone, who can she rage against? Who can she hate? Who will explain how this could have happened?

“My life stopped that day,” she says. In a moment of melancholy, she tells Amélie that she was “born to cry.” In short, she is stuck. Thus Madeline becomes a recipient of Amélie’s quest to anonymously fix life’s wrongs, to re-light the fire that has been blown out.

Others would benefit from Amélie’s quest, and others still would take inspiration from it. Dufayel, the Glass Man, whose brittle bones have led him to a life of solitude, sees what Amélie is doing and performs the same service for two others. For twenty years, he has lived alone, passing the time by painting a new copy of Renoir’s Le déjeuner des canotiers each year. Interesting that Dufayel chose a painting with so much life between the strokes, in effect copying Renoir’s copy of life. But twice removed is too far and he begins to make small changes in his life, slowly getting involved in the lives of those around him.

Inspired by what Amélie has been doing, Dufayel befriends Lucien, assistant to the mean-spirited local grocer, teaching him to paint. Both actors deliver stellar performances both in their scenes together and when they’re apart. Serge Merlin (Dufayel) in particular has a stunning scene that left me weeping.

Looking back at what I’ve written so far, I’m making this out to be a sad, depressing movie. It isn’t. All of it is built in a world that mixes the imaginary with the real, the mundane with the outrageous. There are some wonderful effects that help lighten the mood and further the story. The film has a message, but the message is delivered with a bit of a wink and the caveat that the happy ending you’re looking for isn’t always assured (see Joseph and Georgette). It’s a film that leaves your soul cleansed and ready to rethink what you think you know.

This is Matt. He likes the film Amélie.

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Last week I watched Batman Begins. Truth is, I was a little worried about this one. I’m a fan of comic books and while I don’t buy any of DC Comics’ current Batman output, I spent more than a few bucks on them in the late 1990s. Armed with all my geek knowledge and my mental checklist of notes they needed to hit, I sat down to watch the movie and surprisingly, I loved it.

What a great movie. Warner Brothers did the smart thing and went back to basics with this one, tossing out the previous film interpretations and all the baggage that came with them. (We don’t have to worry that ice skates will pop out of Batman’s boots anymore! Yay!)

Director Christopher Nolan and writer David Goyer made a smart decision when they decided to weave Bruce Wayne’s childhood story into the story of his young adulthood. This is one of those stories that everyone knows, at least to a certain extent, yet it still has to be told. The origin could have been a wasted fifteen minutes of film that put its audience to sleep, but in Batman Begins, it’s told compellingly yet sparingly, giving us just enough, and just when we need it.

When Wayne travels the world training himself to perfection, Christian Bale’s delivery is real and honest. The training scenes were wonderfully shot, culminating in Bruce’s split with Ra’s al Ghul, a decision that will come back to haunt him later. (Sorry for the spoilers, but you need to head to the back of the class if you didn’t see that one coming.)

Part of the trouble with Batman, from the writer’s perspective, is that he has to be completely feared by the baddies (and to a certain extent, the general population), but still manage to be a hero. Batman Begins does a good job of walking that line. It keeps the altruistic intentions of Bruce Wayne and still manages to make Batman a vicious monster. Seriously, I’ve never been more afraid of Batman.

There’s absolutely no question that the villains know that this is the boogeyman come to get them, and that’s exactly what Batman should be. This is one of the big difference between Batman and, for example, Superman. Superman is friend of the good guys. Batman takes the opposite position and is the enemy of the enemies. An important difference, I think, and one that I’m impressed they worked in.

Now for the villains. In short, I loved them. Cillian Murphy (above) doesn’t need the mask and special effects to be scary, he does it just fine on his own. Unassuming and almost prissy in delivery, Dr. Crane (Scarecrow’s day face) perfectly plays his psychological games before he even takes out his fear gas. Beautifully nightmarish special effects with the fear gas, too.

Ducard and Ra’s al Ghul (played by Liam Neeson and Ken Watanabe) become a counterpoint to Batman’s benevolence, with al Ghul deciding that Gotham City is past redemption, and that the best solution is to destroy the entire city in one fell swoop. Interesting that al Ghul’s villainy comes as a response to another villain’s actions. This is the kind of layering that was missing when Danny DeVito was chewing up the scenery going “Wah Wah Wah.”

Finally, we need to address the Katie Holmes issue. Just about every review I read when the movie came out two years ago mentioned how she was the weak link and that she walked through the part in a daze. I really didn’t have a problem with her performance. The part of Rachel Dawes was a bit two-dimensional, but I thought Holmes did a fine job with it. It wasn’t life changing, but let’s be realistic, she’s Katie Holmes, not Judy Dench.

There are a lot of things I’m leaving out, but I’ve already gone long. Here’s some quickies: Batmobile=Awesome; Gordon=the dad on Alf; Monorail fight=Suspenseful (har har); Lucius Fox=Potential; Michael Caine=Perfect; Christian Bale=Sore throat; and Swimming in the fountain=Paris Hilton.

This movie did what a lot of summer blockbuster-type movies don’t: It delivered action and asplosions without sacrificing quality writing and character development. Batman Begins is easily the best “comic book movie” I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s a good “movie movie” besides. It isn’t without its faults (I hate that the only way you can tell Bruce is younger is that his hair is combed different.), but it’s certainly better than most of the films showing.

Hopefully interesting coincidence: Christian Bale and Gary Oldman starred in competing made-for-TV films about Jesus Christ in 1999. Bale played Jesus in Mary, Mother of Jesus, and Oldman was Pontius Pilate in Jesus. Since finding an irreligious review of either seems unlikely, I’m going to assume they both suck, just like every other made-for-TV movie about Jesus Christ.

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