42: A Film that Polishes the Past

Watching the Jackie Robinson biopic 42 last week, I couldn’t help but feel that I was watching ABCs movie-of-the-week in a theater.  Sure, the acting was good (it was great to see Harrison Ford actually act instead of relying on smirks), the story is of course compelling – it practically begs to be filmed – and the film does a reasonably good job of telling the story.  Chadwick Boseman and Nicole Beharie do fine as Jackie and Rachel Robinson (even when they have to spout cornball dialogue).  What’s troubling is how unreal the film looks and feels.  So little attention was made, aside from vintage cars and clothing, to make it feel like 1946-47.  Instead, we get a polished version of the past.

In 42:

No one sweats.  Seriously.  No one.

No one smokes.  (For a sense of how smoking should be used in a period film, check out this scene from Good Night and Good Luck)

All clothing is new, clean and pressed.  No dirt.  No grime.  No tatters, even of the clothing from kids in Florida, who I presume weren’t exactly rolling in the dough.

Everyone is beautiful (except for the bigots), from the lead characters to the woman who babysits the Robinson’s son.

Baseball jerseys, even after nine innings of play, are bleach-white.  We only see dirt directly after Jackie dives or slides into a base.

All men are clean shaven or have neatly trimmed beards.

In short, it has the look and feel of The Truman Show or Pleasantville, except this isn’t supposed to be a farce of a 1950s sitcom.  This is supposed to be a film dramatizing real life, not an antiseptic version of the past.  Some directors are so careful to make films look realistic, but Brian Helgeland misses the boat on this one.

He also falls short on the screenplay.  It’s amazing how the writer of such terrific films as Mystic River and LA Confidential managed to write such contrived, cornball dialogue.  Maybe Jackie and Rachel Robinson really did have a marriage as strong as the one depicted in the movie, but it doesn’t make for good film.  No arguments?  About anything?  Never anything mundane to say?  Only perfectly executed love notes to each other?  I’d put good money on the real-life Rachel Robinson actually being a full-fledged three-dimensional woman.  Instead, Nicole Beharie does what she can with a two-dimensional script.

See the film, if only to watch it with your kids, as it may provide an education for them about racism and baseball’s tarnished past.  But for the most part, the past has been polished in 42, keeping the story from ringing true.  One has to wonder how good this film could have been in the capable hands of a filmmaker like Spike Lee.

Sara Bareilles in Milwaukee

Playing a solo show in front of a small audience in an intimate setting has got to be one of the most difficult tasks to pull off well.  Last Friday, my daughters and I had the pleasure of seeing Sara Bareilles at one of the coolest venues I’ve ever been to: Milwaukee's Humphrey Scottish Rite Masonic Center Auditorium, a hall that seats 435 in an odd, miniaturized arena-like setting.

In the midst of a short solo tour to drum up support for her forthcoming album, The Blessed Unrest, Bareilles seems very much at ease in the more intimate setting, eager to exchange quips with fans, and exhibiting that rare quality of being witty while still coming off as appreciative and sincere.  

Bareilles’s piano chops are adequate, not brilliant, and her guitar work is similarly restrained, but none of that really mattered, because the star of the show was her vocal work on top of well-crafted pop songs.  She’s got some serious pipes, with far more dexterity and control that I could have anticipated.  As she effortlessly glided above the chord progressions of her new tune, “Manhattan,” to a perfectly hushed audience, Bareilles’s voice reminded me of Nora Jones with more of an edge.  Unlike Jones, Bareilles has just enough anger, as exhibited in songs like “Love Song” and “King of Anything,” to make her repertoire varied and interesting.

What I like about Bareilles, and what made me particularly eager to take my daughters to the show, is the strong nature of her lyrics.  Rarely do you find a performer whose words are both positive yet unyielding, vulnerable yet confident.  Even her angry songs don’t lash out at her victims.  Instead, they reveal her strength, as if to say, “You’re simply not good enough for me.”  Whether or not it’s been her intention as a performer, assisting girls and women to raise the bar in their love lives had been a fine byproduct of her career.

Her new song, “Brave,” co-written with Fun’s Jack Antonoff, couldn’t have a more fitting message, especially for teenagers: be who you are and don’t be afraid to speak out.  It’s not filled with f-bombs.  It doesn’t play the victim.  It doesn’t lay blame.  It just inspires. 

Bareilles’s 90 minute performance left the small crowd happy, even after the odd encore of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”  But in a way, her rendition of this classic song exemplified the entire evening: her sparse arrangement cultivated a more creative approach, allowing for minor tempo and harmonic modifications, not to mention adlibbed vocal parts, that resulted in just enough unpredictability to make the song sound new again.

No small feat.

Sara's new album is due out in July.

Big Fish - The Musical

Producing a musical based on a movie based on a book, the 2003 film having only grossed $66 million domestically, ranking 43^rd for that year, takes some serious chutzpah.  The producers must have been sold on a huge leap of faith: that Big Fish is going to translate so well on stage compared to the film, it won’t need to rely on a built-in audience the way other musicals have (Dirty Dancing, The Lion King, The Addams Family, etc.).  Watching one of the final performances of Big Fish’s pre-Broadway run in Chicago last evening in a mostly empty balcony, I got the sense that the show will need to be tweaked in order to fulfill its promise, and even that might not be enough.  I actually enjoyed the show a great deal and was happy to have spent the money to see it.  But spectacular stage sets with creative use of multimedia, superb acting and singing by the three leads, and some fine melodies aside, there are three improvements the musical needs to make before it debuts in New York in September.

First, the show could benefit from a few reprises to help ingrain the finer of composer/lyricist Andrew Lippa’s melodies into the audience’s minds.  Some tunes are one-offs, pleasant little ditties that serve their purpose in one take (both ”I Know what you Want” and “Bigger” hit the mark beautifully), but others, most notably “This River Between Us” and “Daffodils,” could have benefitted from a reprisal, even if just in passing within a different tune.  Motifs are important in musicals or in any other extended work, and Big Fish suffers without them. 

Second, the ending of the first act, “Daffodils,” aims very high but falls just a bit flat.  I could tell what they were going to do minutes before it arrived, and I sensed that they were attempted to hit the high mark set by musicals such as Wicked’s “Defying Gravity” or, more probable, Sunday in the Park with George, when Georges Seurat’s masterpiece is displayed in all its radiant glory, but the field of Daffodils didn’t provide the lift they were meant to.  The result certainly can’t be classified as a Spinal Tap moment (when a miniature Stonehenge arrives on stage to the embarrassment of the band), but it should have made a bigger impact.  This will need to be rectified in New York.

Third is most problematic.  Like the film, the stage production of Big Fish lacks a plot.  There is nothing particularly dramatic to move the story forward.  A father with a penchant to tell tall takes and a son who wants to see the real man behind the stories don’t see eye to eye.  Big deal.  Additional conflict is required to keep the audience engaged.  There is a reveal at the end of Act One that’s meant to advance the plot, but to me, it wasn’t terribly important or interesting.  Suspected infidelity?  From a son who already doesn’t respect his father?  That’s hardly enough to fill a second act.

I’m not suggesting that the story be something it isn’t.  For me, fictional works of realistic people in realistic situations are always more interesting than fanciful creations, so why not throw some additional tension into the story?  Both of the wives, Sandra Bloom and Josephine Bloom, are left to play the role of supportive, one-dimensional characters: never bothered, always understanding, unrealistically wise.  How about making them human?  One or two additional scenes – a conflict between the son and his new bride, or between the son and his mother – would likely be enough to keep Big Fish from feeling like a day of casting on a calm lake.

Big Fish is clearly a labor of love for writer John August, Andrew Lippa and director Susan Stroman.  A few more waves, or even a white cap or two, might be enough to turn this beautifully done production into a sustainable Broadway musical.

Life on Film: Every Seven Years

The recent release of the film “56 Up” served as a reminder for me to catch up on the seven films that preceded it.  A magnificent achievement and a gift to those who are curious about life and all that comes with it, this documentary series began in 1964 and continues to record the lives of fourteen English people from various backgrounds every seven years.   I’d caught a bit of “42 Up” on PBS some years back, but with the advent of Netflix and Instant Watch, all are now available for immediate viewing, with the exception of “7 Plus 7” (though many clips from that episode are reviewed in the latter films, and it’s also available on DVD).  Remarkably, all fourteen people are still alive, and most are doing well with their lives despite the challenges that so many them – and so many of all of us – face: divorce, mental and physical illness, lack of money, losing parents, raising kids and career disappointments.

The premise of the movie is a quote attributed to St. Francis Xavier: “Give me the boy until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” and indeed, upon watching the film “7 Up,” it’s not difficult to forecast the lives of some of the kids with a degree of accuracy.  And as I continue to make my through the series (I’m midway through watching “42 Up”) I can’t help but put myself in the shoes of the subjects of these movies and wonder how my life would have looked on film at age seven (and every seven years after).  I’m quite glad it wasn’t, but I’m grateful to the people who’ve agreed to be filmed, for they’ve helped to reveal the humanity in all of us.

Making my way through the series, I find myself captivated with these rather ordinary lives and rooting for the happy endings of every one of them.  When we are shown a happily married couple in one film, only to discover that they’ve divorced by the next film, it’s a heartbreaking revelation.  This isn’t “The Bachelorette” or “Survivor”; these are real lives of common people doing the best they can with what they have.

It reminds me of my twentieth high school reunion, the last one I attended, when so many people came together with seemingly one collective thought: I hope you’re doing okay.  No longer did it matter who had been friends with whom, who had been a jock or a band nerd, or who had been cocky or humble.  Life has a way of humbling everyone, even the most successful among us, and it was gratifying to discover that so many of us had survived, had persevered, had found happiness, lost it, and then found it again, had endured the unimaginable only to come out of the other side stronger and more grateful.

Perhaps Roger Ebert said it best in the last paragraph of his review for “56 Up”:  It is a mystery, this business of life.  I can’t think of any cinematic undertaking that allows us to realize that more deeply.

I couldn’t agree more.  I’m rooting for the class of 1986 from Brookfield East High School, and I’m rooting for the fourteen people who have given so much of themselves to the study of life.  Not just their lives, but all of ours.

The Tylenol Murders Thirty Years Ago

One of the most gripping and troubling pieces I've read in a long time: Chicago Magazine's chronological retelling of the seven Tylenol murders that took place in and around Chicago in late September, 1982.  The tragedy begins on Wednesday morning, as a 12 year-old drops dead in her bathroom, and through dozens of interviews of family members, friends, political leaders, doctors and investigators, we follow the unfolding of events, hour by hour, as more and more people are discovered dead with no logical links.  

Except for one. 

Through the efforts of skilled professionals and a little bit of luck, in just over 24 hours after the first death it's concluded that cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules are the culprit.  Within five days, Johnson & Johnson recalls everyTylenol bottle from the shelves nationwide, resulting in an overhaul of how foods and medications are protected ongoing.

Hearing first-hand accounts of the mundane events that lead to so many deaths leaves you feeling hollow, shocked, angry and saddened.  You want to reach out and stop these ordinary people from making that fateful stop to Wahlgreens, or call out and tell them to forego the medication and just go to bed.

Vitality literally asphyxiated.  The crime remains unsolved.