EDINBURGH 06 (pt3) : 'An Inconvenient Truth' (2006) / 'The Driver' (1978) / etc

Friday, 25 August 2006

COLOUR ME KUBRICK ¦ FR/UK 2005 ¦ Brian COOK ¦ 84m (timed) ¦ 5/10
From the moment that first reports of the project started to circulate, John Malkovich fans hoped that Colour Me Kubrick - in which he plays Alan Conway, a flamboyant, alcoholic conman who for several years conned people out of drinks, money and hospitality by posing as legendarily reclusive film-director Stanley Kubrick - might provide the star with his most eccentric and entertaining role since Being John Malkovich. No such luck: Malkovich is, of course, always worth watching. But, sad to report, he's found himself adrift in a rather shoddy, low-budget (and, worse, cheap-looking) Brit-comedy here - with results only marginally more worthwhile than his last such venture, Johnny English.

The screenplay is (as an end-credits disclaimer admits) only somewhat loosely based on the facts of the Conway case, and the scriptwriter can't come up with material worthy of the subject-matter or the skills of his leading-man (who was, if anything, funnier as that lethal and upmarket sociopath, Tom Ripley in Ripley's Game.) A sort of "Carry On Kubricking" would seem to be the aim here, and in the picture's drably-directed search for broad humour we learn next to nothing about Conway, Kubrick (a name for some reason always pronounced "koo-brick" in the American manner), or why so many people were so prone to being so taken in.

The cast is rather distractingly packed with familiar faces from British films and TV, most of whom have next-to-nothing to do. These include Jim Davidson, of all people, rather gamely extending his range as a camp cabaret artiste ("TV's Mr Nice Guy"!) whose act recalls Tom Jones and Liberace. Davidson even gets to stop the show with his wildly OTT entrance, descending the )(white marble?) staircase of his mansion while lipsynching Lionel Richie's 'Hello' to the delight of his assembled party-guests. Trouble is, once the show has thus been stopped, it never really gets started again and the picture limps along to its fizzle of a conclusion. Colour us distinctly disappointed.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH ¦ USA 2006 ¦ Davis GUGGENHEIM ¦ 97m (timed) ¦ 7/10
Former US Vice President - and failed presidential candidate - Al Gore has been touring the world for years with what he calls his "slideshow": an illustrated lecture on global warming. An Inconvenient Truth is his latest attempt to spread the word, saving him the trouble of actually visiting the thousands of cinemas and millions of homes in which the film will be shown on theatrical release, DVD, and television.

Though nobody's idea of a groundbreaking piece of cinema as such, the film is sufficiently persuasive, well-paced and compelling to avoid (a) looking like an extended, slick, big-budget campaign advert for a man who may well have another crack at the White House and (b) bogging down into a hand-wringingly worthy preaching-to-the-converted diatribe. That said, director Guggenheim is occasionally guilty of moments that fall into these traps - especially in the final moments when a rather soppy number by Melissa Etheridge swells to accompany closing credits that you half expect to conclude with the screen-filling words VOTE GORE.

Well, perhaps less than half: Gore makes no bones about his desire to change the world, and viewers agnostic on the "climate change" issue will surely be swayed by the force, humour and scope of his argument. It's a one-sided film, of course, with only the occasional dismissive mention of any opposing voice. But as Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock have recently shown, "documentary" (or more precisely "non-fiction") cinema can be a fine "bully pulpit" for passionate polemicists.

And even Republican voters, watching Gore in action as he turns tricky scientific subjects into an easily-understandable form that also respects the intelligence of his audience, might be forgiven for wondering what "their fellow" might look like if asked for speak for only a few minutes on camera before a live audience on the subjects closest to his heart.

THE DRIVER ¦ USA 1978 ¦ Walter HILL ¦ 88m (timed) ¦ 7/10
Though it's never actually spoken out loud, professionalism is the key word in The Driver: the story of two men who think they are extremely good at what they do, pride themselves on their skills, and put those skills to the test against each other. Ryan O'Neal is 'The Driver' - the best getaway man in Los Angeles, in California, in the USA, perhaps in the world, whose impassivity exceeds even that of Alain Delon in Le samourai and whose pared-down, rootless lifestyle prefigures Robert De Niro's Neil Macaulay from Heat.

Bruce Dern is 'The Detective' - the cop who sets out to finally nab the outlaw he dismissively refers to as 'The Cowboy.' It's very much a man's world (indeed, a Mann's world, in tone and style in some ways prefiguring Michael) - on the sidelines we find The Player (Isabelle Adjani), a casino gambler drawn into The Driver's exploits, and The Connection (Ronee Blakley), who provides him with his jobs. None of the characters in the film have names; none speak in what we might call realistic dialogue: laconic, hardboiled sentences are exchanged, along with icy-cool looks that may or may not burn with suppressed passions.

The chattiest person on screen by far is The Detective, who is also the most enjoyably, obnoxiously dislikeable. The plot, such as it is, is a slim but convoluted affair - no more than a pretext for a series of jawdropping, palm-sweating car-chases in which Hollywood's finest stunt-drivers show off their skills in extended episodes of squealing tyres, honking horns, blaring sirens and percussive slam-bang-crashes, through streets where green means 'go' and red means 'go faster.'

Such sequences - and they bookend and punctuate the narrative - are also testament to director Hill's own professionalism: planning and instinct combining to dazzle us with image and sound. It's a shame, then, that as a scriptwriter Hill isn't quite up to scratch: apart from The Detective's characterisation and dialogue, there isn't much that's especially memorable or distinctive in his screenplay. The result is an intermittently compelling and stirring ride, but one from which we emerge bruiseless, unshaken and disappointingly intact.

MIKEY AND NICKY ¦ USA 1976 (director's cut first shown in 1986) ¦ Elaine MAY ¦ 105m (unverified timing, from EIFF catalogue) ¦ 5/10

Boisterous, rough-edged, but in the end offputtingly dislikeable character-study of two middle-aged bloked in mid-70s Manhattan.

Peter Falk is Mikey; John Cassavetes is Nicky. Both are crumpled, stubbled, a little bit over-the-hill. They smoke too much, drink too much. Haven't quite managed to grow up yet: both 'Mikey' and 'Nicky' sound like kids' names: by now they should perhaps be 'Mike and Nick.' But they've known each other since school, and maybe this is just what they've always called each other. Both are somehow (it's never especially clear exactly how) connected with the shady world of bookmaking, and thus the Mob in general. Both have wives and a child, but find plenty of other stuff to entertain them in their seedy, crowded New York milieu. Of the two, Mikey is perhaps the more responsible, the more grounded. Nicky remains a loose cannon. We follow them over the course of one long night, and into the next morning: Nicky is convinced one of his gangland associates has hired a hitman to kill him. We know this to be true, and the third major male character is said assassin: an overweight, fed-up chap played (with sweaty world-weariness) by Ned Beatty. He calls his old pal Mikey - the first communication between them in a number of months - and Mikey comes to his old pal's aid, assuring him that he's suffering from paranoid delusions. Nicky even at one point accuses Mikey of being "in on" the supposed hit. And, again, we (eventually) know this also to be true...

Falk and Cassavetes are skilled performers, comfortable both with each other (Cassavetes frequently cast and acted alongside Falk in his own films), and with writer-director May's preferred method of very loose, hyper-extended improvisation. Their characterisations, while not exactly diverging far from their established screen personae (Falk: solid, alert, slow-talking, a wry observer of the world through his one non-glass eye; Cassavetes: impish, sardonic, fast-talking, volatile) have depth, texture, and vividness. The relationship between the pair - Mikey 'looking out' for his less-streetwise pal - prefigures Jeff Bridges and John Heard in Cutter's Way (1981), recalls Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro in Mean Streets (1973).

Indeed, the characters we see here are in some ways like older versions of the very small-time "hoods" from the latter movie - they traverse similar streets, kill time in similar movie-theaters, exchange similarly mocking, sparring dialogue. But whereas in Cutter's Way and Mean Streets we get to know and, if not exactly like, then to some degree empathise with the characters as we gradually get to know them, the more time we spend with Mikey and Nicky the less interesting and worthwhile they seem. May's camera follows them pretty closely; there are few scenes which don't feature one or the other, and usually both of them are front and centre, in our faces, the smokey fug of their clothes almost palpable to our touch. Their behaviour in public is transgressive but also compelling and appealing in a rough-house, lads-together kind of way.

Behind closed doors it's a different story: when we see how they interact with women (their wives, and Nellie, the hapless 'good-time' girl they treat with brutal disdain), we realise that this is essentially a character-study of not one louse but two. In the early stretches it's the bond between the pair which exerts the most fascination - but later we come to realise that they might not even be pals at all: they have an almighty row which marks the pivot between the second and third 'acts,' in which the depth of the animosity between them becomes evident. Events then move quickly to a violent, somewhat hysterical conclusion that sees one of the pair dead as a direct result of the actions (and inactions) of the other. But by this stage we're pretty much past caring what happens to them, so long as we no longer have to spend time in their company.

This is a shame, because there's much to admire about Mikey and Nicky (even if there's so little to admire about Mikey and Nicky). Falk, Cassavetes and Beatty are all fine, M Emmet Walsh and William Hickey predictably shine in minor roles. Ironically enough, however, it's the few women on show who actually make what is, minute-for-minute, the strongest impression, especially the strikingly believable, all-too-brief performance from Joyce Van Patten as Nicky's putupon wife Jan. Carol Grace is, meanwhile, so poignantly touching as the fragile Nellie you can see why Truman Capote said she was the inspiration for Holly Golightly from his novella Breakfast at Tiffany's. And you wonder why she reportedly made only one other film: 1960's Gangster Story in which she was directed by and co-starred with Walter Matthau, the man she'd married the year before (this after two marriages to novelist William Saroyan) - and who apparently "discouraged" her from accepting more acting roles despite the acclaim she justifiably received for her work here. Nice goin', 'Walty.'

Neil Young

seen 25th August 2006:
Colour Me Kubrick [full title Colour Me Kubrick: A True ...ish Story] at Cameo cinema (press show)
An Inconvenient Truth at Cineworld cinema (press show)
The Driver and Mikey and Nicky at Filmhouse cinema (public shows as part of 'They Might Be Giants' retrospective; paid [Driver] £2.75 with press and bulk-buy discount and [Mikey] £4.20 with press discount)
Edinburgh Film Festival

Edinburgh 06 index page

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