127 Minutes

Last Tuesday:

"A guy and a tiger on a boat for two hours?" my friend asked.

"No no," I assured him. "There are going to be flashbacks and fantasy sequences. It'll be like 127 Hours."

And so I thought it was a funny coincidence that the running time of Life of Pi happens to be 127 minutes.

(Since I'm a bit of an amateur numerologist, I can't help but notice that I'm writing this post on 11/27.)

In truth, there are a lot of similarities between the two stories/movies. Each features an opening section in which we meet the protagonist (a young man) and gradually start to see how he ended up in his horrible predicament. Then, the second act begins, and he's thrust right into it. Both predicaments present a very low chance of survival, each seemingly hopeless in its own way. (The big difference is that one really happened and the other is a work of fiction.) And both predicaments feature a necessary stasis, essentially pinning the characters to their locations -- whether literally, between two immovable rocks, or figuratively, in an expanse of the Pacific Ocean that looks the same to a person on one day as the next. 

And in both cases I knew the outcome of the story. With 127 Hours, it was a famous incident that had been covered in the news, the details of which we knew only because the man had survived the ordeal. With Life of Pi, I'd read the book.

127 Hours was my favorite movie of 2010. So I should love Life of Pi just as much, right?

Not quite.

And I'm having a hard time figuring out why.

In every respect you can imagine, Ang Lee's movie is nothing less than a perfect adaptation of Yann Martel's book. It's a faithful rendering in almost every aspect, and the visualization of the book's images is something you might have thought was only possible in your mind's eye. It's that beautiful. Some shots are so stunning that you may just scratch your head about how they were even accomplished. Also, I would absolutely recommend seeing it in 3D, even if you are someone who's skeptical of the film industry's motivations when it comes to the third dimension. It's gorgeously immersive.

Nor can I find fault with the lead performance of Suraj Sharma as Pi, short for Piscine Molitor Patel. I don't necessarily think it's in the same league as James Franco's from 127 Hours, but I wouldn't argue with you if you did. Pi is a character obsessed with finding his spiritual path -- he dabbles in several contradictory religions simultaneously -- and that aspect of the character may make the acting performance even more tricky.

So, why am I having trouble saying I loved the movie?

It's not because I knew how it ended, or at least, I don't think it is. Sure, for the most part, you want to be surprised by these things, which is why I know certain film fanatics who have a rule about not reading books they know will be adapted into movies. That's a rather strict stance, because it means you'll miss out on a lot of good books. But I know why they take that stance.

But I also knew how 127 Hours would end, and it vaulted to the #1 spot on my year-end list. As did Michael Almereyda's present-day adaptation of Hamlet, back in 2000. As did Titanic three years before that. Merely knowing the ending of a movie doesn't spoil the experience of it. As I've written before, that's the big difference between movies and TV. With TV, you watch to find out what happened. With movies, you watch to find out how it happened.

So the only element I can really point to was a part of the story structure that may be different from the book, though I can't honestly remember. I've been dancing around whether Pi survives the ordeal, but then I realized, I shouldn't be, because the movie doesn't. You meet the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) before you meet the young one, and he's telling us this whole harrowing story several decades after it happened. But he's not actually telling it to us -- he's telling it to a Canadian writer he's just met, played by Rafe Spall.

For some reason, I was bothered by this narrative device. Every time the film jumps out of the lifeboat and back into the present, I felt unceremoniously ripped out of the story. I think that's because there's something inevitably hokey about it. We used to see movies told this way all the time, with regular breaks from the action to check back in on two doe-eyed children with their chins propped on their palms, asking "And then what happened, Grandpa?" "Well my child, we're just getting to the good part," Grandpa would answer.

So I felt there was something irredeemably quaint about the listener/storyteller relationship between Spall and Khan, as though this one adult man was playing doting grandchild to another adult man. And I think part of the problem is that Spall isn't all that good. They could have chosen anybody for this role, and this guy just wasn't doing it for me. That's a shame, because Khan, an actor I've seen a number of times before, is quite good.

But there's one climactic moment where the script fails Spall more than his line reading. At a truly key moment, Spall is forced to speak a line of dialogue that sounds so goofy, in context, that I felt like laughing, and one member of my audience actually did laugh. Which is certainly not what Lee or writer David Magee were going for in that moment.

However, Lee also makes a very smart decision at the end that I will only hint at here. If you've read the book, you know that something unexpected happens near the end of the story. What Lee chooses to show -- or not show -- during this moment is key in how we read and understand all the previous events we've seen.

Ultimately, I did not feel the surge of emotion in the climax of this movie that I felt during the climax of 127 Hours. Is Danny Boyle just better at emotional manipulation than Ang Lee? Maybe. And is that not necessarily a good thing? Maybe.

But sometimes, all your critical analytical tools fail when confronted with the physiological reaction your body produces as an emotional response to something you're watching. Life of Pi did not produce that physiological reaction in me, at least not to the extent I was hoping.

It's still filmmaking at a nearly unparalleled level, especially on the technical end. And you should most certainly see it in the theater, in 3D if possible.

Will it be my favorite movie of 2012? No, but only one film can claim that hallowed honor.  This just doesn't happen to be it.

After Moon and 127 Hours were two previous #1s essentially carried by one actor, I don't want to become too damn predictable anyway.

A silver lining

The surest way to jinx your plans? Give voice to them.

In Wednesday's post, I announced my likelihood of being able to attend a 1:50 3D showing of Life of Pi. Then I didn't make it in time.

But really, is it a jinx if something was simply never realistic in the first place? First off, I was getting off work at 1:30, and you never leave at the exact minute you're supposed to clock out. Secondly, the drive to the theater would have taken the better part of 15 minutes even in normal traffic. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is most decidedly not normal traffic, and you should probably at least double your expected travel times. But even if it had taken only slightly longer than normal to drive there, there's still a parking garage you have to navigate, and a walk of three minutes or so to the theater, even if you are moving quickly. Never mind the fact that a large popcorn was going to be my lunch, and there's always at least one person ahead of you in the snack bar line.

Fortunately, it wasn't one of those situations where I was close enough to even chance it, making me commit a lot of time and energy to a fool's errand. At 1:48, when I was still more than a mile from the theater, I pulled over and jumped on my phone's web browser to figure out other options. I knew there were no more Pi showings that were at a convenient time, so now I was looking for something else.

And so, the silver lining to missing Life of Pi? Silver Linings Playbook.

Which was playing at 2:35 in downtown Culver City, about three miles from the theater where I meant to see Pi. 

I love the work of director David O. Russell, but until now, that had been based primarily on the strength of three movies that were all released in the 1990s: Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster and Three Kings. I hated I Heart Huckabees and ended up thinking The Fighter was good but not great.

Suffice it to say that Silver Linings Playbook had me wondering if it might rank up there with his two masterpieces, Flirting with Disaster and Three Kings.

The interesting thing about Russell as a filmmaker isn't that he consistently breaks new ground or blows your mind with some kind of unique technique. After his debut, which you could say was pretty unusual as it dealt with mother-son incest and featured a euphemism for masturbation as its title, I'd argue that Russell has mostly just been giving us really fresh takes on genres we're familiar with. Flirting with Disaster was a fresh take on a screwball comedy, while Three Kings was a fresh take on the war movie (albeit with some genuinely innovative camera and narrative techniques). Has there been a genre that's been more worked over throughout the history of cinema than the boxing movie? Yet most people felt that The Fighter was a really fresh take on that genre.

You could say that the only time Russell really gets himself into trouble is when he tries to indulge his more off-the-wall impulses. Enter I Heart Huckabees, a disaster that was much more than flirted with. A satire about commercialism featuring a pair of existential detectives, Huckabees was a misstep from minute one. It may be no coincidence that this shoot featured the short-fused director's most famous blow-up, a verbal scrum with Lily Tomlin that developed a life of its own on the internet. (He also reportedly nearly or actually came to blows with George Clooney on Three Kings, though that didn't hamper the brilliance of that film one bit.)

In fact, I considered calling this post (and wouldn't it have been clever) "Burning Bridges Playbook," because I realized that the director rarely works with the same actor twice. But then I recalled that not only was Huckabees his second (and obviously last) collaboration with Tomlin, after Flirting with Disaster, but Mark Wahlberg has worked with him three times: Three Kings, Huckabees and The Fighter. The last two were the important ones for this discussion, because Wahlberg continued on with him even after the famous Tomlin incident and his weakest film on a relatively short resume.

Besides, I didn't want to concentrate on the negative in a post about a film I liked as much as I liked this one.

Silver Linings Playbook finds Russell returning again to his success with reinvigorated genre films. In fact, as I was watching this movie, I was reminded most of last year's Crazy, Stupid, Love. Like that film, Playbook reminds us that a romantic comedy can really stick with you just by being cast and written well. And it doesn't even need to do anything particularly unconventional.

The difference is that Russell is a much better (or at least more established) filmmaker than Crazy's Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, and he brings elements of his best work into elevating his own script for Playbook. Watching the film, I was also reminded how well the director does chaotic scenes with multiple people arguing, which have been prominent components of especially Disaster and The Fighter. And the arguers have been cast perfectly here. Bradley Cooper won't get an Oscar nomination, but should -- Robert DeNiro and Jennifer Lawrence probably will, and Lawrence might even win. They're all that good. Heck, even Chris Tucker is really good in a small part. Cooper and Lawrence also succeed at something you rarely see these days -- a smoldering, undeniable chemistry.

But I have to wonder if part of what makes Silver Linings Playbook so satisfying is that it may be Russell's most personal film. At least in terms of what we've already discussed about him. A guy with bipolar disorder given to fits of rage and occasional violence? That could probably describe Russell himself just as well as it could describe Cooper's Pat Solitano. Which means Russell is uniquely qualified to dramatize that fugue that takes over during a panic attack, where sounds fade to the background and a ringing of the ears surfaces to the front.

What's amazing is that Russell tackles such serious issues and gives us several scenes that are intense to the point of disturbing, while still keeping the movie essentially light and "feel good" (in the best sense of that phrase).

Only the guy who brought us Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster and Three Kings, right?

Here's hoping that the director has found his own silver lining in a sometimes troubled career, and the plays he draws up in the future will be more masterpieces like this one.

Pre-Thanksgiving 3D extravaganza

I've developed a very specific kind of tradition lately as it relates to my Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving trip to the theater.

In the past, I'd always try to go to a movie on the shortened last day before a long weekend -- Memorial Day, Labor Day, what have you. My boss tries to release us two hours early on days like this, and I'd taken advantage of those extra hours to grab a flick.

Since the birth of my son, my responsibilities have necessarily caused many of these opportunities to fall by the wayside. One that hasn't fallen is seeing a movie on my pre-Thanksgiving early release, and since my boss already told us yesterday that he might not be in today and that we could leave two hours early, I don't have to worry about a last-minute bout of Scrooginess causing him to renege. (Unless he reneges electronically, but that seems unlikely.)

And even though it originally looked like the times might not work out, it now appears likely that I'll be able to attend a 1:50 showing of Ang Lee's Life of Pi. Making this the third straight year that I will have gone to a 3D movie on the day before we eat turkey.

In 2010 it was Tangled. In fact, it was Tangled by default, because either there wasn't anything else opening that interested me, or the other things opening didn't have convenient start times. I dragged my ass to Tangled even though I didn't have high hopes for it, just to take advantage of the opportunity and my wife's blessing. As you may recall, I absolutely loved it -- so much so that I eventually ended up ranking it #2 for the year.

Then last year it was Hugo. I didn't love Hugo like I loved Tangled, but there were parts of the movie that delivered an equivalent level of exhilaration to me. In fact, the thing both films had in common was their exceptional use of a technology that is frequently fumbled by filmmakers: 3D.

Now Life of Pi is being billed as "The next Avatar." At least, on the billboard I see on my way in to work. I certainly hope that the story is better, but I think the comparison they're trying to make is a technological one. If this billboard is to be believed, Life of Pi is doing things with 3D and CGI that will make us ooh and ahh the way Avatar did.

Actually, I know the story of Life of Pi is better because I've actually read the book. I say "actually" because reading has been a particular weak spot for me in the past couple years. In fact, until I experienced a reading renaissance through audio books on my commute to work in the past six months, which has led to the consumption of about a dozen new books, it'd had been a couple years since I'd read a book from start to finish. Pathetic but true.

And so when an adaptation of one of the books I've read comes home to roost, it does give me a little sense of pride that I'm not a total philistine. For similar reasons I'm looking forward to the adaptation of Ender's Game, which is due out next year and will probably be a visual marvel in its own right.

But let's not look ahead to next November 1st. For now I'm excited about this November 21st, when I'm hoping to go three-for-three in pre-Thanksgiving 3D extravaganzas as part of this newly established tradition.

Now just knock on some wood for me that I don't have any work crises that nullify the possibility of my early release.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.