American the Beautiful

I just finished watching Jim Sheridan's In America. I remembered when this little film got three Oscar nominations back in 2004 (Best Actress for Samantha Morton, Best Supporting Actor for Djimon Hounsou and Best Screenplay for Sheridan). At the time I was like WTF? because I had never heard of it (it made $25 million at the box office, which is kinda impressive because I don't know anybody who saw it). I was intrigued primarily because of Hounsou's Supporting Actor nod (like Denzel Washington's Glory character Trip, who "ran for President," Hounsou didn't win).

Well, I just saw it and it is a remarkable little film. Both the acting nods were well deserved and, frankly, Paddy Considine should have been nominated for Best Actor as well for he carries much of the movie.

Hounsou's performance is problematic because it is the archetypal "magic negro" role. I won't spoil the ending for you but you know what happens to magical negroes, don't you? (They win Academy Award supporting actor and actress nominations).

Also, the Irish immigrant family embodied by Considine, Morton and the wonderfully guileless Bolger sisters, Sarah and Emma, seem to land in a pastel-colored, magical-realist New York City. Sure, times are hard and they live in a tenement, but the girls roller skate on hardwood floors, attend Catholic school and walk unmolested to an old fashioned ice cream parlor run by African immigrants.

Still, the movie is full of wonderful little grace notes and is worthy of all the awards it won.

~rave!

A Star is Born

Mila Kunas' performance in The Book of Eli surprised me. Going in I was not a fan. I found her eight year run as Jackie Burkhart on That 70's Show to be the weakest link of a talented and underrated ensemble cast. As Burkhart, she was shrill, selfish and annoying - like nails on a chalk board. But, and this is where movie stardom comes from, the camera loves her. As I was watching "Eli" it occurred to me that Kunas with her big eyes and pouty lips looks like a young Angelina Jolie. There was a toughness - a rod of steel in her character. On screen with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, she holds her own. And, narrow as she is, Kunis looks like sex. All our hardest working female stars look like sex: Angelina Jolie, Halle Barry, Rosario Dawson, Kate Hudson, Penelope Cruz, Scarlet Johansson, and now, Kunis. Watch her work.

The Gospel of Eli

The Book of Eli reminds me of a story I once heard about a pastor who wore his Christian faith proudly. One day a knucklehead said

"So, if I slap you, you're going to turn the other cheek?"

The pastor gathered himself before stating with conviction, "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, but if you slap me you will know I AM NOT JESUS CHRIST!"

The Book of Eli is a one hour and fifty-eight minute meditation on that anecdote. The Eli of the title is a righteous man but he is nothing nice. When he tells a highwayman that if he places his
hand on him again he will not get the hand back, he means it and follows through with brutal efficiency.

Rugged, world worn and taciturn, Eli (Denzel Washington) is on a mission from God, having received the call a year after something tore a hole in sky killing and blinding untold millions. Following that voice, he uncovers the last bible on earth and begins what will become a thirty years trek across a desolate post-apocalypse landscape - with no knowledge of where he is going but with an un-erring resolve to get there.

Brutal efficiency is also an apt description of The Book of Eli as directed by brothers Albert and Allen Hughes. With their muted palette of grays and sepia tones, the Book of Eli doesn't engage you so much as goose you with brief explosive bursts of efficiently choreographed violence followed by long dry stretches of stagnant exposition. Eli is bleak in both landscape and execution. A good chunk of the opening scene has no dialogue at all leaving us to see the world as Eli sees it - through sound, touch and faith.

Denzel Washington is iconic and moves through this movie like the cinematic monument he is. Eli is like an amalgam of his greatest hits, evoking everything from Glory to American Gangster. In this performance, there is the righteous determination of El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) and Reuben Carter (The Hurricane); the steely ruthlessness of Creasy (A Man on Fire) and Frank Lucas (An American Gangster); and the unbowed confidence of Trip (Glory) and Jake Shuttleworth (He Got Game). In fact, the movie evokes fond memories with a Trip-like moment involving Eli, a dead body and a pair of much needed new boots. No flogging ensues.

How you respond to the Gospel of Eli will depend on your Christian faith or lack thereof. It will either warm and inspire you or leave you completely cold. I find myself somewhere in the middle. While I enjoyed the movie overall, I found its pop evangelizing a little pushy. Further, it irked me that Eli often appeared to be the last black man alive. As he rolled through through desparate towns and over desolate highways, with few exceptions, he encounters nothing but haggard-looking white people.

Sure, Jennifer Beals has an extended role but she is so light-skinned that she plays the mother of Mila Kunis (who is an Angelina Jolie-esque revelation in this movie).

It is somewhat disheartening in a movie directed by two black directors and starring our greatest black actor to witness a future that still has no place for black people.

~(no)rave!