Frank
An interesting cinematic trend is emerging: cast the best, most talented, best looking performers in roles where we can’t see them. As counter-intuitive as it appears, it has been wildly successful. Scarlett Johansson was never better than in her disembodied role in Her, while Bradley Cooper was a laugh riot as a pissed off raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy. And now, the great Michael Fassbender dons a huge, smiley, fake head for nearly the entire duration of his new film, Frank.
It definitely works.
Of course it does, he’s Michael Fassbender, exactly the actor who’d be drawn to such a role. Fassbender is wonderful, naturally, this time with a delicate charm. His gesturing, physical presence, and endearing vocal delivery outline a beautiful performance that drives the film and, eventually, breaks your heart.
Though this film is hardly a tragedy. It’s wryly funny, at times satirical but routinely quite intimate. Co-written by Jon Ronson, the film is inspired by the enigmatic musician/comic/giant-head-wearer Chris Sievey, to whom the film is dedicated and with whom Ronson briefly played.
Writing with Peter Straughan – his collaborator on The Men Who Stare at Goats – Ronson recreates himself as the everyman character Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), an aspiring musician who stumbles into eccentric frontman Frank’s band when the previous keyboardist tries to drown himself. Then Jon’s off to the woods for 18 months to record with a group who mostly loathe him.
As Clara, the Lady Macbeth for this band on the fringes, the always magnificent Maggie Gyllenhaal controls every situation with a withering glare. Gyllenhaal’s weary expression carries with it the untold baggage and band history that Jon just isn’t interested in understanding.
Lenny Abrahamson’s utterly masterful direction first draws you in with Jon’s artistic voyage, but a slyly evolving storyline populated with playful but authentic performances leads you somewhere surprising yet inevitable.
Frank, though joyous, odd and thoroughly enjoyable, slowly exposes the limits of talent, the weight of enduring relationships, and the corruptively seductive power of fame.
It’s also an insightful ode to the transcendent, mad magic of music.
The Congress
Tired of the same old girl meets boy stories? How about girl meets a digital version of herself, loses many years in a cryogenic state, and then travels between realities in an effort to reconnect with her son?
Welcome to The Congress, a flawed but often fascinating work inspired by the 1971 novel The Futurological Congress, Stanislaw Lem’s darkly comic allegory of life under communist rule.
Writer/director Ari Folman (the Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir) sets his sights on the Hollywood regime, where veteran actress Robin Wright, playing a fictionalized version of herself, has reached a critical point in her career.
She’s years removed from being America’s sweetheart, she’s been branded as “difficult,” and she’s on the wrong side of forty. But now, there’s a curious career opportunity…
After much soul-searching and a big paycheck, she agrees to let the film studio create a digital copy of herself. Once completed, the new Robin will have a busy career doing, in the words of the studio boss (Danny Huston), “all the things your Robin Wright won’t do” while the old Robin never acts again.
The ironic part is that the real Robin’s acting has never been better, and her touching performance anchors the film even when it threatens to skid completely off the rails.
Folman has big, ambitious, eccentric ideas, but things get a bit messy once the film makes the shift to animation. Unlike Bashir, where clashing styles of animation only accentuated the different memories of war, the animated portion of The Congress sometimes struggles to find a tone worthy of the strong live action opening.
It becomes a mix of Heavy Metal, Pink Floyd The Wall and Cool World, leaving some interesting issues hanging as dots that are never fully connected. Folman -who has said he got his first inspiration for the project in film school-seems so invested in the overall concept that he can’t resist the urge to explore every idea, no matter how tenuous.
Good thing, then, that Folman’s explorations are more interesting than most, leaving The Congress as a visionary, frustrating, extraordinary head trip.
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