Best Picture
| THE WINNER:
Yet, as magnificent as the movie is, I am troubled by the ending. Dunbar, who has been branded a traitor by the United States Army, and his wife (Mary McDonnell) are separated from the Sioux who have to move on as the white man moves forward and will eventually wipe them out. I can't understand why Costner's character (please don't flood me with emails) did not simply go with them, he would have been killed by the army either way so why not stay safely in numbers? Karen puts the perfect button on the scene, most actresses would play it as suitably impressed by Henry's clout but she questions. When he leaves his car on the street, when he gives several people fistfulls of money, when they are finally seated, she wonders how he can manage this kind of access. Throughout the film, she provides the film's second narration as she begins to understand what her boyfriend (and soon husband) does for a living. "I know women who would have gotten out of there the moment he brought home a gun.", she tells us "But I gotta admit, it really turned me on." She becomes part of his world too, not just a sideline but a willing participant who sees her moral code beginning to meld with his. The moral code of this mobster society is dangerous, we see that in scene after scene. What is interesting about the community of the mob in Goodfellas is that there is an air of dangerous unpredictability (this will eventually bring about their end). There is a scene that takes place in a bar, where Henry, Tommy and Jimmy meet a loudmouthed wiseguy named Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) who makes references to the fact that Tommy was, at one time, a shoeshine boy. Tommy, slightly irritated, tells him "Maybe you didn't hear about it, you've been away a long time. They didn't go up there and tell you. I don't shine shoes anymore." There is a laugh, it was only kidding. Then Billy pushes a little more. There's a warning, an insult, then it gets ugly. After Tommy gives Billy a savage beating, the three lock Billy in Henry's trunk and take the body out to bury it. Problem: Billy isn't dead. In any other gangster film they would have simply taken Billy out of the car, killed him and then buried him. But the scene takes a brilliant detour, they stop by Tommy's mother's house and enjoy a meal - it's 2 in the morning - all so Tommy can borrow to finish Billy off is his mother's butcher knife (he explains that they hit a deer and the hoof is caught in the car's grill and he needs the knife to cut it off). How many movies take this kind of time? How many movies are willing to be this comically gruesome? This is why Scorsese is the best. The ending of the film, when the whole gangster empire has crumbled and Henry and Karen are forced by the FBI to turn over inside information and then go into the witness protection program are . We know we shouldn't feel bad for Henry but somehow, having seen the lifestyle of these mobsters we sense that something has been lost. In the end, Henry becomes exactly what he never wanted, "Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I'd either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies. Didn't matter. It didn't mean anything. When I was broke, I'd go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over. And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different; there's no action... have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food - right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody... get to live the rest of my life like a schnook." In a way, this is his eulogy |
THE WINNER:
Caine is at his best in almost any role but Graham allows him a certain villainous charm brought forth by an overwhelming sense of frustration. He plays Graham Marshall, a likable fellow whose world is a stale series of minor irritations and boring routine. His wife is irritating in a calm, polite manner with her addiction to her over-sized electric stair-stepper that keeps shorting out the power in the house. At work, he is an average joe, a pleasant face who remains "one of the guys", suffering fools gladly until his promotion comes. His office is not much better than home, the boys are the pat-on-the-back, brandy-and-cigar types who gather for lunch to drink and swap bad jokes. His goal is to do better than George Brewser, the sad sack who is retiring into a life of quiet drollery. He feels bad for the poor soul but part of Graham is ready for George to leave because he's up for his job. Graham's tedium is broken by three events that occur within a short time. First, when he's at home turning the electricity back on for the umpteenth time, he gets a shock that knocks him backwards. Second, he finds out that the promotion that he has been waiting for is going to a younger man (one of the fools he's been suffering gladly), a pickle of a schmo named Bob Benham. Furious, he stalks away from work toward what will be the greenlight to his remedy to his rotten life: He accidentally kills a pan-handling bum in the subway. Then he starts thinking. What follows is a cat and mouse game with Caine setting up no-so-complicated traps for his victims to fall into. His wife, having been taught how to turn the electricity back on, is gullible enough not to ask questions when he teaches her how to turn on the electricity while holding a leaky pipe. Bob takes a little more work and Graham uses the man's addiction to boating to rid himself of Bob and his lapdog Henry (who has moved his desk into Graham's office). It's all very clean, all very neat and all of it with a grin. What is shocking about Graham is how he handles his crimes. He takes it with an heir of calm, a mask of serenity and politely mournful front. Caine's best moment (one that I believe should be included in his eulogy montage) is the moment when he recieves a phone call that his wife has been killed. He sits on the phone, leaned back and the person on the other end breaks the news. Caine says "Oh . . . what a shock" and holds the phone to stifle a laugh. It is a pure Michael Caine moment and the moment when we realize that we want him to succeed. What may be most shocking about Graham Marshall (that's not a pun by the way) is that there isn't any solid justification for doing any of these things. Graham's evil comes along, not simply out of madness, not simply out of frustration but by choice. We never sense that he's under the influence of any drug or demon to commit his crimes. We can see that getting rid of his wife will find him happiness in his love life and we sense that getting rid of Bob and his subsidiaries will rid him of opposition to move up the corporate ladder but's it's all a matter of choice. If I could find a pattern to Graham's crimes it is that he kills people who cling to materialistic goods. His wife obsesses over her exercise machine. Bob obsesses over his boat. The bum in the subway wants money. Even Henry takes possession of Graham's office. The exception is Stella (Elizabeth McGovern), the pretty co-worker with the understanding smile who seems to be the polite alternative to the fools Graham suffers. He likes this cherubic sweetheart because she represents the kind of hearty romance that his marriage was lacking. Director Jan Egleson's achievement with film is the tone and the casting. The movie is very dry, sometimes quiet, it has the narrative tone of one of those old Alec Guinness comedies like The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Then in the middle he adds Michael Caine who takes the dry material and gives it a splash of color. He sells the material with a cheshire grin and the happy bounce of a man capable of evil deeds just to see if he can get away with them. I think that's because we're so familiar with him from other films. We like his smirking approach to a role like this so much that we know that when he gets screwed, this dog will have his day. |
THE WINNER:
Kathy Bates hit the ground running. Over the next decade she would quickly become one of the most dependable actresses of her generation turning in one fine performance after another even if the movies sometimes fell by the wayside. As Annie Wilkes, Kathy Bates created a villian that will live in movie history, a realistic psychotic born at a time when Freddy and Jason were growing tiresome, even by the standards of the generation that made them famous. Born in the mind of Stephen King (based on feedback he has gotten fans he described as "a little loose in the shoes"), she represents the kind of fearful stalker mentality that keep celebrity tabloids flourishing and celebrities spending of fortune on security. The story unspools when Paul Sheldon (James Caan) drops into Annie's life. She couldn't be more pleased. Paul, you see, is a popular novelist who has spent the past decade writing a successful series of romance novels featuring a 19th century heroine named Misery Chastaine. It has become the rock around his ankle and hasn't allowed him room to explore anything else. Annie is his number one fan. Returning home from a snowy retreat in which he has finished the manuscript for a book about slum kids, Paul's car slides off the road and crashes in a snowbank. Annie pulls him to safety. She doesn't take him to the hospital, but instead takes him to her lonely old house in the country where she seems willing to nurse him back to health. Both of his legs are broken so she has made him make-shift splints. "I'm your number one fan", she keeps telling him and fawns over his greatness and how much the Misery Chastain books complete her life. She goes on and on and it seems that her life is consumed by Paul's work. Then she reads the final book in which he has killed her off and that's when Annie comes comes unglued. What follows is a cat and mouse game as Annie shifts from joy to rage from melancholy to childish fits. She burns the manuscript of his new book (she doesn't like the foul language) and forces him to write the exploits of Misery's triumphant return. What makes Annie Wilkes so effectively creepy is that she seems to wear the kind of mindset we associate with a celebrity stalker. She looks sweet, she sounds pleasant but when something dilutes her obsession it has unpredictable results. She reminds us of John Hinkley, Mark David Chapman and Robert John Bardo, because the mindset seems so focused. She has moments in which she beams, like the scene in which she holds the Misery book in her hand and proclaims it "a perfect thing". The complexity that Bates brings to the role is the ability to shift from one extreme to the other. At one moment, she is passive and pleasant but it can turn quickly and she grows dark and violent. Being unpredictable is the best quality a villain can have because it throws caution to the wind, but it may also be one of the most difficult for an actor to convincingly pull off. Off-setting the moments of outrage are quieter moments that can be just as unnerving, like a disturbing moment in which she looks out the window, depressed and tells Paul that someday she just might use her gun - if she ever gets the nerve to put bullets in it. The moment in the film that is going to live forever is Annie's ultimate act to keep Paul her slave. She uses a technique known as "hobbling" which requires her to put a block between his feet and smash her prisoner's ankles with a sledge hammer to slow his healing. This is changed from the book in which Annie cuts off his foot and then cauterizes it with a blow torch but I think for the film, the sledge hammer works better. The ax would have turned the scene into just a gorefest, the hammer allows us to feel the scene on a visceral level. You never know what mood is going to boil up next. Comparatively there are levels to her madness, one rage can be a childish hissy fit, as when Paul comments that she's has bought typing paper that smudges and another can be dangerous as the frightening moment when she finds out that he has killed off Misery. She is nothing if not original, especially in her words. Spilling something she says "Oh, what an oogie mess". Recalling a disappointing film she rants "He Didn't Get Out of the CockaDoody Car!". Angry at Paul's decision to kill Misery she growls "You dirty birdy". What is funny, when I was reading the book I had Louise Fletcher in mind. When I saw the movie I realize how much of a mistake that might have been. Bates gives a full performance of a lunatic who doesn't need a mask to commit evil. Her home is a lonely old place full of trinkets and desolation, far from anywhere. It represents the opposite of Annie's personality, it is quiet and predictable where she is not. |
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