In touch with the actual ScarJo

No, you aren't doing a double take -- the title of this post is intentionally playing off the title of the final post I wrote on my trip to Japan.

That's because while in that post, I was spiritually communing with Scarlett Johansson's character from Lost in Translation, but in this post, I am in touch with what the actual ScarJo is doing these days.

And that is ... directing movies?

I don't know why I should be surprised by that. Her instincts as an actor show she has an understanding of storytelling through film, so the next logical step would be directing. 

Eleanor the Great, which was the first of two movies I watched on the plane back from Tokyo (My Dead Friend Zoe does not get its own post), is actually Johansson's third effort as a director. The first two are quite different: something called American Express Unstaged: Ellie Goulding in 2015, and a 2009 short called These Vagabond Shoes. 

Eleanor the Great is also different, in that it's different from what we might expect Johansson might direct, if we had any preconceived notions of that. We might assume she'd follow in the footsteps of a director who had brought her one of her more iconic roles, maybe even make a Sofia Coppola-type film if Lost in Translation still felt like a defining text for her all these years later. 

Instead, she's following in the footsteps of another actor-turned-director, Sarah Polley.

Polley's Away From Her was what came to mind for me as I watched Eleanor the Great. Both films were made by young actresses about elderly women, and both surprised with that choice because it would not seem to be any outgrowth of their own lived experience. I guess the difference is that Polley was really young when she made Away From Her, only 27, while ScarJo has now crossed (gasp!) into her forties, only just. (She's 41.)

Indeed the general subject matter is not the only surprising thing about Eleanor the Great, the June Squibb-led film that deals with a 94-year-old woman who has just lost her best friend, with whom she'd been living for more than a decade. (Squibb is actually two years older than that, now 96, though the movie did come out last year.) It's the specific deception Eleanor gets involved in that's quite the controversial matter, though I won't tell you what that is -- it would be a bit like telling you the central controversy of The Drama, and just about as controversial. 

In any case, I'm pleased to say that Johansson proves herself quite capable on this side of the camera, though not to the level Polley achieved with Away From Her. This is a more mainstream, conventional movie, even with the controversial topic I'm not talking about now. 

So yes I'm back now, and was pretty useless the first few days, as that cold I told you about in my last post didn't get any better. I can tell you it was a lot of fun rolling my bags through multiple airports, stopping every minute or so to sneeze or blow my nose, and just hoping that no busybody airport worker would see me and ask me if I should really be flying. (My cover story for having a runny nose and watery eyes was that I was emotional over saying farewell to a loved one.) I didn't get stopped, but that didn't make the redeye from Tokyo to Brisbane, and then another flight to Melbourne, any less miserable.

$3.99 DVD smackdown

Yesterday was my birthday, but on my lunch break, I found myself buying a card for someone else. It was a thank you card, and it was for my dad and his wife, who have been in town since Saturday meeting their grandson and step-grandson. They're leaving today.

The part of this story that's germane to movies is that the Walgreens where I was buying the card was having a sale on DVDs. A pretty good sale, I thought: $3.99 apiece.

Movies that make it into these sale bins are usually nothing you'd want to see. If you've even heard of the titles, they're things that are 15 to 20 years old, and were considered some of the biggest flops of those actors' or directors' careers. But not yesterday. Yesterday, there were some good pickins. In fact, so good, that when I decided to limit myself to just one, it was a tough choice. I was feeling celebratory enough to treat myself to a $3.99 movie on my birthday, but too fiscally conservative to treat myself to a second.

So, here were the contenders:

1) Shattered Glass (2003, Billy Ray)

For it: A fascinating study of the desperate measures a man will take while trying to cover his tracks. Shattered Glass is the true story of Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen, at his career best), a former wunderkind writer for The New Republic who blatantly fabricated some or all of the details of stories he wrote for the magazine. When rival journalists pick holes in one of his stories, he goes to great lengths to try to retroactively support the existence of sources, events, even entire companies that never existed. It's thrilling and extremely well done.

Against it: Just watched it again about six months ago. When I buy a DVD, I like for it to be something I haven't seen in awhile, so there's at least the possibility that I'll watch it soon after buying it, even if I probably won't.

2) Away from Her (2006, Sarah Polley)

For it: A wrenching and heartbreaking story of a woman (the excellent Julie Christie) whose life radically changes after the sudden onset of Alzheimer's. Not only are the performances great (Gordon Pinsent is also terrific as the husband who is no longer recognizable to his wife), but it's an extremely impressive and mature debut for its director, Polley, who was only 27 at the time of the film's release, and is known to us primarily as an actress (Go, Splice).

Against it: Too depressing. Movies with heavy subject matter fall into that category of films that I may really love, but may also not feel the need to own. I consider Schindler's List one of the greatest films of all time, but I don't really want to own it.

3) The Lives of Others (2006, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

For it: An exquisite and moving portrait of East Germany under the Stasi, the secret police who monitored artists and other liberal thinkers for signs of political dissidence, told through the eyes of one of the most fervent pro-government surveillance experts (played by the terrific Ulrich Muhe, rest in peace). The ways in which his own world view crumbles are fascinating as this Stasi captain becomes moved by the lives of a playwright and his girlfriend. But even more impressive is his own cat-and-mouse game to avoid being suspected of losing his resolve by his own superiors and former ideological comrades.

Against it: Both copies of the DVD were emblazoned with a sticker that read "Previously Enjoyed," even though it was shrink-wrapped and in all other respects looked new. Even if I'm buying DVDs cheaply, I sometimes think they seem tainted if they're used, although it's a good way not to waste a perfectly good DVD.

So who came out on top?

Winner: The Lives of Others

Even though I have similar levels of affection for all three films, I decided that The Lives of Others was the one I most felt I needed to own. I've seen it only once, which gives it an advantage over Shattered Glass, and even though it's sad in parts, that's not the dominant mode of the film, which gives it an advantage over Away from Her. And at least the DVD looked new, so I felt I could ignore its pre-owned status.

Now I just have to figure out when I'll get to carve out the two hours and 18 minutes needed to watch it again.

So which would you have picked?

The Lives of Others ended up being only the first of three movies I received on my birthday. Here are the other two:

1) Toy Story (1995, John Lasseter). I currently have this classic film ranked #2 on Flickchart, meaning that I should at least own a DVD copy of it already. I owned it on VHS, but never quite found myself in a situation to upgrade to DVD. So yesterday's gift skipped the DVD step and went straight to BluRay, making this the official third BluRay in our new collection.

2) Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008, Darren Lynn Bousman). And then this became our fourth. Even though the friend who sent me this one sent it as kind of a joke, because he hated it, I didn't receive it in that way -- I actually really liked this film (which he knew), and watched it twice when I first rented it two Januarys ago. That means it's just about time for a third viewing.

Unfortunately, I didn't get my other birthday wish as stated in yesterday's post, the Texas Rangers beating the New York Yankees. But that's for me to whine about on a sports blog, not a movie blog.