A Few Laughs and Four Films

2011_3_05 A Few Laughs and Four Films

Let me start with some humor provided by David Fitzsimmons, our local political cartoonist, who also writes a satirical column in the Arizona Star on Saturdays about the weekly folly in in the state’s politics. He poked fun at our state Senators up in Phoenix, most of whom have “spent three years in the eighth grade. “He goes on the say, “Most of them think a Rhodes scholar is an asphalt expert and PBS is something that happens to wives “to make them edgy once a month.” He also weighed in on the subject, hot in the press this week, about the desire of some citizens of Pima County—that is to say Tucson-- wanting to secede from Arizona. It is an idea that has a great appeal to Sue and I, however foolish it sounds. He has three suggestions for possible names for this 51st state. The people who advanced the idea thought “Baja Arizona” was a good name. Fitzsimmons goes them one better: “Bajajaja.” If you don’t like that he has two other suggestions: “Arizonistan,” or “Mexafornia.” He also thinks everything north of Tucson should be called “southern Utah.”

I have seen four films in the past few days that are worth a few remarks. Two are low budget American films, one is a French erotic drama, and one is an early action film with Michael Caine.

PRINCESS KA’IULANI I picked up for Sue, as she is an aficionado of all things Hawaiian, and she was in tears by the end if this film. The father, a Scottish man, takes the Princess, a mere teenager, away to England when some greedy American businessmen trying to hi-jack the islands for their own profit and dominance, threaten the royal family. Being wrenched away from her homeland was very hard on her and to make things worse she is abused at the school she is sent to by the wealthy aristocrat who becomes her protector. Fortunately her host has two teenage kids, a boy and a girl, and they like her and soften the blow of being away from home. Eventually she and the lad fall in love; a period of bliss follows, but it is not to last. She was too committed to helping her homeland and he had to take care of the estate once his father was gone. And when she did return to the islands she did play a part in her people getting the right to vote. But, alas, she died shortly thereafter. The American influence could not be stemmed. In 1950 it became our 50th state. However, a minority has preserved the Hawaiian culture and it has made a bit of comeback in the past decade or so. In 2007 Sue and I went to Molokai to attend a Hula event that lasted three days. And the Hula celebrated was the traditional Hula, not what you find in the bars in Honolulu.

The young woman who played the Hawaiian Princess was O’orianka Klicher, the same young woman who at 14 played Pocahontas in Terrence Malik’s film, “The New World.” She did a good job in both films. Interestingly, in both films she plays a doomed Princess who falls in love with a foreigner, both Englishmen, and then spends time in England, to end up dying in their early twenties.

The DVD contains two discourses on Hawaiian history and both are informative and authoritative. They fill in some details and add nuance to the Princess’s character.

CONVICTION is a small movie but effective, about a timely topic: DNA testing that free men from prisons who were mistakenly jailed, tried and sentenced. The movie tells the incredible story of two mischievous kids who had lousy parents, so they bonded together to hold off a mean-spirited world. San Rockwell plays the brother, who is hot-headed, impulsive, and a magnet for trouble, while Hillary Swank plays his sister, Betty Ann Waters, who also has a temper and enough will and determination to move mountains, even if it takes 18 years. That’s how long the brother is in jail for a brutal murder he didn’t commit.

He goes to prison in 1980. The sister eventually becomes a lawyer, and once she finds out about the DNA tests she goes after a blood sample from the crime of the assailant, and then enlists Barry Scheck, the well-known DNA lawyer, to help her prove they got the wrong man. The brother had made the mistake of insulting the female Sheriff’s deputy who had arrived to take him in for questioning and she takes umbrage at his attitude, and actually decides to frame him out of spite, and she pulls it off by threatening Water’s wife and an ex-girl friend who lie to the jury saying he told them he killed the woman, who was stabbed something like 47 times. The sister, Betty Anne, finally gets the women to retract their stories. All her patience through several setbacks and her diligence on finding out the truth pay off in the end. Unfortunately the ex-Sheriff’s deputy could not be brought to justice because the stature of limitation had run out. Nonetheless the DNA test proved Waters wasn’t the killer, so he was freed. He was one of 254 men who have gotten off because of the DNA tests. Justice delayed is better than none at all. The actual killer has never been found.

LEAVING is a hot-blooded French movie that stars the bilingual Kristen Scott Thomas who has never been so sexy. It is not a new story; one thinks of Nora in “The Doll House,” and Emma Bovary. It is the dilemma of the trophy wife who finally pushes back, usually with tragic results. Suzanne (Thomas) has been married to a doctor for twenty years and he hardly pays attention to her. Anymore. They have two teenage children, a boy and a girl. Superficially, they appeared to be an ideal family. But then the husband hires Ivan (Sergi Lopez) a Spanish laborer, a hunk but also an ex-con, to do some cleanup work around the house. One thing leads to another and when Ivan makes a play for Suzanne she has already decided to go for it, as she’s tired of being the bored and ignored housewife. That initiates a passionate affair driven by lust and a dream of a different life, one more emotionally satisfying. But when the husband finds out he initiates a war between himself and Suzanne; he blocks every avenue that the couple have to make some money. They are quickly reduced to penury, their backs up against the wall. In desperation Suzanne and Ivan invade the family home and walk off with paintings and other valuables which she figures, she was only taking back what was really her’s after twenty years of service. The cops saw it differently and Ivan was arrested when he tried to sell what they took. The husband made a deal with Suzanne: come back home and Ivan will be freed. She has no choice so she takes the deal. But he can’t stand her husband any more, and one night she gets out of bed and takes her revenge. The film ends with Suzanne and Ivan at their secret meeting place in the countryside. They embrace and…at this point I told Sue it should end here; we needed go further, as we know how it has to end, badly. And it did end right there.

It’s easy to think they might have made it as a couple if the husband had let her go and been fair with her about what she was owed. It is also easy to be swayed by their passion, which was borne on Eros rather than love. But few experience that kind of ecstasy in their lifetime. But as Rex Reed commented in his review; he salutes the sincerity Kristen Scott Thomas brought to the role of Suzanne but ultimately she’s “a woman who is basically naïve, careless and self-destructive.” The trade-off of such reckless passion is a state I would characterize as NO EXIT.

PLAY DIRTY is the last film, an early Michael Caine vehicle, about a suicide mission to blow up a petrol depot in the desert that Rommel needed for his tanks in the battle for North Africa. It’s a “Dirty Dozen” type plot; an officer behind the lines dreams up this next-to-impossible-mission that he recruits several criminals for it to be led by a naïve engineer, which is Caine. The reason I ordered it from NETFLIX is I am reading Caine’s autobiography and it was one movie of his I thought I hadn’t seen—there were several-- but as it turned out I had seen it, probably when it came out. But no matter, I didn’t mind seeing it again, although it was predictable from beginning to end.

The movie was shot in Spain in geography first exploited by Sergio Leone. Caine tells a funny story about another film being shot close by, “Shalako,”with his old buddy Sean Connery. Some Indians on horseback came riding over a sand dune and the run smack into, not cowboys, but German tanks and other armored vehicles. The horses bucked their riders and high-tailed outa there. Laughter abounded but it took an hour to clean up the mess.

As for “Play Dirty” I did enjoy seeing several middle aged British actors that I used to see quite often in the sixties and seventies, like Harry Andrews and Nigel Green.