Monthly Archives: August 2018

RIORI Vol 3, Installment 89: Steve Pink’s “Accepted” (2006)

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The Players…

Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Columbus Short, Maria Thayer, Blake Lively, Adam Herschman and Lewis Black, with Anthony Heald, Travis Van Winkle, Mark Derwin, Ann Cusack and Hannah Marks.

The Story…

Graduating high school senior Bartleby is blithely confident he’s gonna get into college. If not the one of choice than surely one of his backups. He’s sure of it. His folks are hoping on it. His little sis is doubtful of it.

Big ups to sis. Even his backup, backup schools said no thanks. According to his mom and dad if Bartleby doesn’t get his rear in gear his future is in beyond doubt. Hello minimum wage job at the Costco.

Not having any of that, Bartleby cooks up a scheme: invent his own college! All he needs are the right papers.

And curriculum.

And campus.

And mascot.

And you get the idea.

The Rant…

Getting into the college of your choice is hard.

Wait. No it’s not. Not anymore. At least not in the conventional way. Listen.

Hold it, I know I’ve regaled you here at RIORI about my collegiate misadventures. Not gonna do that this time out. Well, not much.

As you know, dear reader that I am a cook. I went through culinary school, yeah, but before these dark days I studied and eventually graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in English. Actually, the mouthful on the CV was a Bachelors’ in English & Textual Studies with a focus on Continental Philosophy, minoring in Secondary Education and Creative Writing. Looks good on a résumé, until you have to explain to the interviewer what the whole wad meant. I then went so far as pursuing a Masters’ in Secondary English Education. Needless to say things didn’t pan out. How do you want your steak?

Now. Let’s set the wayback machine to, oh, 100 years ago. Back then, only the well-heeled could afford to send their spawn to college. It was as prestigious as it was expensive. Graduate and head out into the working world and said world was your oyster. Even more so if it was a “name school.” You’d have it made, and make your folks would be proud. Return on investment.

Post WW2, with America’s expanding middle class, average families could better afford their kiddies the opportunities Mom and Dad wanted at their age. It grew easier to find the college of your choice: the GI bill, scholarships (both academic and athletic. Sometimes both), student loan programs, all sorts of gateways to golden educations that would demand careers.

Then came the 60s, the Baby Boomers. Them and their weed and Grateful Dead LPs and vainglorious notions of shaping the future. Getting into college became mainstream. The workforce and the armed forces were no longer the only places to go post-high school (especially when the draft came calling. Saint Stephen with his rose and all). The skies were as high as they were. Opportunity would come knocking with a degree. A world in the making for the Boomers and later their privileged progeny. Right?

Um. I smell grease.

Enter Gen X. College was not an option. It was a directive. The factories and trolling for unexploded ordinances in some rice pattie Dad defended were for the rabble. You are going to college. Why? Good job, steering clear of time clocks and twitchy napalm. We, the parents, are going to be either bled dry or horns-waggled by the nice lady at the student loan citadel. Anything, anything but “do you want fries with that?”.

At the butt-end of the 20th Century, getting into college was no longer precious. It was ironclad; high school grads would go to college, or else. No longer an overt privilege. Dad would call it marching orders, waving a stump he put to best use at the now closed John Deere factory. We saved up for years to have you get to college, against the odds of risking another pattie and having to keep up with the Jones. And the Smiths. Maybe the Millers, too. You call this a report card? How the hell could you flunk lunch? Let’s hope the boards overlook that. And stay away from that manure spreader.

Don’t get stumped (no apologies there). Getting into college these days can be a real boondoggle. Lots of choices, lots of reasons, lots and lots of paperwork. Forget earning the golden ticket to the ideal job. Simply getting accepted is a real job. A chore. And don’t think the Millenials have it any easier. F*cking FaceBook posts have merit now, even if they only consist of videos of cute cats robbing banks, anime style. It went from once tricky and for the rich to the average getting tricky, if not tricked. My folks recently covered my student loan debt. I graduated with that long-winded shingle decades ago. The bill was paid in full in my early 40s, me now as a divorcee, single dad and a lot of cool recipes. None of them concocted based on the musings of Sartre.

I view it this way: back in the day, college was for the privileged, therefore a degree earned was not just accreditation, but esteemed in select, special circles. By mid-century, college screamed opportunity for every young adult! A good job awaits, not the sh*thole GI Dad had to endure at that age. Go get ’em, kid!

Into the 1980s, where college was de riguer for any high school grad and post-grad it was out into the working world and, well, so what? You went to college? And made it through? Fine. What else can you offer?

By the turn of the 21st Century—say, 100 years after the Armistice, with all yer silly iPhones, Nintendo Switches and a sh*tty grasp on proper grammar—you’ve been to college, right? Okay. So what? Where?

Name recognition. Branding. What kind of product are you? That’s not such a new worldview; it goes back aways. You want to be a lawyer? You attend Yale. You want to be an atomic physicist? You attend MIT. You want to be the next Yo Yo Ma? You lug your battered cello to Juilliard. You want to be a cook? You attend Syracuse University and graduate with a Bachelors’ in English & Textual Studies with a focus on Continental Philosophy, minoring in Secondary Education and Creative Writing. You want your steak how? Go Gen X!

Let’s face facts here. Finishing college lost its spark during the Clinton years. Getting accepted somewhere was no longer significant. Earning a sheepskin was akin to having a valid drivers’ license. You drove here so you’re hired. Get this validated. No, the other bit.

Here’s the real truth about college ultimately teaches you. I learned this from a nice girl I dated at SU. She was so nice I had a hard time absorbing her brutal, cynical truth. That being claimed, she had a bruh crush on Leo DiCaprio and spend more time analyzing Titanic than Cameron did post-production. She was a stitch.

She told me that the only thing college really teaches you is how to work a system. You give them what they want, they’ll give you what you want. It’s a business.

My scales fell. I understood she was cute, but also right. And slyly devious as well as practical. And I slept with her. I knew everything then. I was king of the world!

*klonk klonk klonk*

Needed that, thanks.

Wrapping up here before wrapping up later, college is a system to work, a game. A gamble. Getting in somewhere is a fun nightmare. Fun because you are an active subject in your own vetting process. A nightmare because you have a weak flashlight. Before I settled on SU I had to visit a lot of other prospects. There’s a feel to each and every school, and when you feel the right feel you apply.

That’s it. It’s how it’s been for the past quarter century. You find a home away from home. You’re not going to be denied an education; that’s the business before the business. It’s not as if you have a question for your prof pertinent to your midterm that they’re not gonna answer. What’s that? No. You’re going to have to go to Harvard to get that info. Hand in your blue book.

Getting an education at college is the program, the end run. You’re going to learn something. These days it’s the campus, the environment, the feel of the school that makes you want to sign on. That’s key, and f*ck all to my blustering earlier. Still think it’s relevant, if only as a slog to getting into college, but at the end of the day as a prospective college student you ultimately gotta find your niche. A school where you feel you belong.

Once in, limping through your chosen major (mine: waffles and Melville), you pick and choose your personal needs, both in academia and finding your Mark (refer to the Zack And Miri Make A Porno installment. Wear a raincoat). You find your wants over your scholastic needs a lot, be it discovering indie rock, burning, the Greek System, beer bongs, basketball games and/or a creative writing workshop dissecting the works of Sylvia Plath (Cliff Note: she was only great cuz she couldn’t figure out the new oven).

As of this installment, getting into college is simple (if you’re rich, white and male…or poor, black and not male). Smile and nod, and keep in the back of your mind all the well-to-do tags stapled to your nuts back in 1918 after thwarting the Hun and your folks investing in Mr Astor’s furrier enterprise. May seem like ancient junk now, especially facing the impulse to find a college that’s you. Where you can get the best education focusing on your skills and needs. Connect with the right friends that both support/inspire you and/or craft a fake ID before Friday night. Maybe even taken under the wing of an esteemed, ancient and most likely boozy prof exposing you to the hidden social commentary in Raymond Carver’s works as well with Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. Choose that. Go learn.

Smart move. What’s yours now? Want fries/Proust with that?

I was accepted at SU. I learned a lot, both academic and social. I found my niche.

Twenty years on I sear duck breast for $12 an hour and am not at all remotely full of regret or bitter…

College is the melted cheese that covers up all the crap you had to endure those lame four years in high school. This is Bartleby “B” Gaines’ (Long) devil-may-care attitude come graduation. College acceptance? Easy. His apps went out, cluttered with average grades, no unnecessary extracurricular activities, precious few blemishes on his non-existant permanent record and no parking tickets in the student lot on Mondays. Getting accepted should be a breeze.

The only breeze blowing is over the empty mailbox, too weak to raise the red plastic flag. Even B’s backup backup school passes him over. And his parents are mad.

Since no school wants B, he concocts a wild idea. College is all about making yourself, right? Then why not create a college that would accept a mediocre grad like himself? All he needs is some hacked acceptance letter to show his dismayed folks!

“The South Harmon Institute of Technology?”

It fits. He’s up sh*t’s creek anyway. But a letter ain’t enough. B recruits his best bud Schrader (Hill) to snoop around and create a bogus website, find a campus, a student body, a skater half-pipe, the usual to keep this ruse alive and kicking. Thus SH*T is born. All will be well.

Until jillions of washouts from other colleges become barbarians at the gates demanding degrees.

What to do? SH*T has become more than a ruse. It’s fast becoming a sh*tstorm. Now what?

Simple. Launch motorcycle stunts into the student pool with a hella pyrotechnics.

Ain’t “college” fun?

I liked this, heaven help me. And not just based on my broken-wing concept of college life. Well maybe a bit.

I know I’m showing my cards here, but after weeks of shaking my head at my viewing selections I need some comfort food. Namely, a flick devoid of artistic pretensions. Any pretensions really. With Accepted, it made for some decent yuk-yuks. Even if it’s under your pillow or a latent snort when you’re taking a leak. You get where I’m coming from. I hope.

Accepted is a classic comic example of “just go with it.” There are no twists, no “serious” ones you couldn’t’ve predicted. Carbon copy characters/stereotypes with a dash of tokenism you can root for. You know all will end well. It’s a straight line. You might have seen this before. Well, thanks to the ur-college comedy, the green jello snorf of Animal House casts its guitar-smashing shadow over Accepted, as well as all the other college comedies that got thrown up in its fart you have seen this coming. Revenge Of The Nerds, Old School, the original American Pie here. Slobs versus snobs. Freewheeling versus square dealing (or really?). Saddles versus paddles (wait a minute). You get it. Now go with it.

I call Accepted a good Saturday afternoon movie. Off work. No errands. Slouched on the couch and, hey, there’s the remote. Snap on the Netflix feed and there go 90 minutes. The spazzy, overwatered dog can wait at the door. A good waste of time, curled up with a dumb, self-aware comedy. You’re already seen Casino too many times already. Time for some popcorn fodder.

In my opinion there are two types of comedy: clever and intellectual or shameless and derivative. The first is like Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. The second is like John Landis’ Animal House (my fave ever comedy. Shocker there). With Annie Hall, you gotta sift for the joke. With Animal House the joke is all over us. Thankfully, Accepted mimicked Landis’ magnum opus shamelessly and with great aplomb.

Director Pink knew exactly where to come from here. College comedy? Animal House is a safe bet. Any new spin? Um, nope. Enough nope to blatantly rip off tons of scenes and tropes from Landis’ marvel. With no shame. And all for the better.

Justin “I’m a Mac” Long was an inspired bit casting as our hapless B. He’s like Ferris Beuller lite. Rather than winging it in his collegiate charade he’s flying be the seat of his pants to keep his SH*T scheme aloft. A lot of thinking on his feet, which always goes catastrophically right furthering making hole deeper. He’s good at being just on the cusp of awkward (“This is another fine mess…”), stumbling and taking his fellow washouts with him. SH*T is a character in itself, akin to the doctor’s Monster and is always teetering on going on the rampage. B’s never truly cool under pressure, and his provides enough tension with his last-minute, half-baked plotting to keep you interested.

If only as an avatar for featuring a chockful of young stars no sane audience would mistake for actual high school grads. That being said, behold the birth of Jonah Hill’s dry, slacker wit. Hard to believe that super fluffy Hill here would go on to earn an Oscar nom, but gift for one-liners are here. Roughhewn, but here. His nerdy Schrader (a nod to infamous, scandalous scenarist Paul Schrader maybe?) is the “sweat act,” the voice of reason, the guy who got into his first choice real college, the protag’s best bud and the Flounder analog for Accepted. His was the not-so-envious position to picture legit college life against B’s freewheeling experiment in Camp North Star meets Lincoln Tech, which of course is far more liberal arts and precious few pretensions. His head’s in Harmon U, his wing is around B, snarky to the end. After wearing a hot dog suit, where do you think Schrader’s allegiance lies? I think Hill’s role as lovable loser here was his breakout.

Since my brain was turned off from my Scorsese-vision and allowed to just sponge, I let myself pay some attention to the minor players. At first I found them driftwood (read: Lively as the romantic interest who was so much wallpaper, doy), but I eventually warmed up to the supporting cast. At first the aforementioned tokenism is its drab guises told me yeah, okay. These folks are gonna fade into the background. Big ups to scenarist Adam Cooper et al to actually use this dips as essential to the A plot. There was a hint of actual filmmaking going on there. A crossbreed between Annie Hall and Animal House, Jugdish! To put it simply, the intro of lost scholarship Hands and Yale-denied Rory was just, yeah, whatever, B’s fellow washouts. The second act proves different, but in a friendly, soul-searching kind of way. Isn’t that a part of the whole (non) college experience? Between marching band practice and endless philosophy seminars I discovered Bob Mould and Korean food. Guess what went further? Maria Thayer and Columbus Short’s awakening as guru and artisan proved if not honest but refreshing, and not just a gimmick. Simply put, we got some money with our minors. Even the minor minors. I’m not gonna so far as to say the supporting cast was “colorful,” I’m saying Pink, Cooper and our rogue’s gallery were good stretching a cinematic dollar. You didn’t feel ripped off of your two Saturday afternoon dollars. Overall predictable, sure, but yeah. Vacuum the FunYuns off your sweater before your kids want some.

I found the ultimate appeal of Accepted was the geek factor. Look, if you set the wayback machine to high school, only the precious few found/created their own cliques of like-minded plastics and/or nerds. High school is that tricky time during adolescence as crucible tenuously balanced between the very deep “Who am I?” up against the greater, often superfluous “Who are we and why care?” Such social structures take the back seat with Accepted (this is post-grad ennui we’re lapping at here, not the cool kids’ lunch table). All that is woolgathering. Here we know the dorks will triumph. Accepted is all about how said mutants do so. The model students at the alabaster Harmon U are an afterthought Omega House, and their subplot is mostly forgotten as SH*T evolves into a pseudo-legit school. That’s where the honey is. Pink may be no DeMille, but he knows how to shove around a cast of thousands—okay, hundreds, if that with multiple stunt doubles and pro skateboarders—into the right places. The rabble is as much as much a singular character as, well, you are. The uncertainty of your future. The ensuing circles you run in. The dopey choices you make for good or for ill. If this sounds like a lot of existential hokum, it is. Either flowing from B’s seat of his pants thinking on his feet, or you just being in a potential life-changing clusterf*ck, figuring it all out and keep at least one foot on the ground is relatable for everyone. At it core, watching  Accepted is like talking yourself out of a speeding ticket. And how relieved you feel if you pull it off.

Yeah yeah yeah. I’m going on like Accepted was the second coming of Chaplin’s The Circus. Call it slow burn elation that comes with an entertaining film you don’t have to think about. Accepted is deliberate fluff. It kinda works. I say kinda because if you’re a thinking person, capping the cynicism lens might prove difficult. You gotta be in the right mood to watch this trash. Guess Netflix caught me on a needful day. Don’t forget, this has been done before, shoehorning tropes from milestone movies into lesser specimens, if only they are trying pay homage. The film understands this. It’s all about how the ornaments. Your Xmas tree already lost all its needles.

Just let me quote this once more when it comes to mediocre movies (it should become part of The Standard by now). It’s like the blues: it’s not the notes, it’s how they’re played. Accepted had easy pacing, inoffensive characters, a reliable story device and a thorough stream of chuckles. I started watching Accepted with my cynic lens firmly capped. I plotted on my notebook a “laugh meter” and tacked off every time I giggled. I gave up in the first act. What I sat down for delivered just fine.

So it’s Saturday and you’re waiting for the college boards to call. While you wait (and wait and wait), queue up Accepted as a good waste of time. Lars Von Trier can wait (and wait and wait and…)

*stirs, brushes pretzel salt off crotch*

Where was I? Right. Learning how to work the system while schilling for Apple. Here’s hoping.

The Verdict…

Rent it or relent it? Rent it. Like I said, funny and a fair time waster. Feel feel to pore over the latest from Werner Herzog some Monday evening on PBS.

Stray Observations….

  • “Are you huffing grass?”
  • Bartleby, as in “the scrivener?” As in “ghostwriter?” Hmm.
  • No matter what role Lewis Black plays he’s always Lewis Black. Even for Inside Out. God bless ‘im.
  • “Yeah. In human dollars.”
  • Dr Chilton—er—Dean Van Horn’s motives echo Dean Wormer’s. No Millennial fun of any kind.
  • “I want to learn how to blow sh*t up with my mind!” Hey, who doesn’t?
  • I think Pink has a Cusack crush. He’s worked within and out of that film family before. That’s John and Joan’s sis Ann as B’s mom. She has the best cleavage of them all. Especially John.
  • “This is so cheezy in the greatest way.” The movie in a nutshell.
  • Did they ever clean up that bathroom?

Next Installment…

John Q Archibald takes on the health care system with a very specific agendum: find a way to save his son’s life. Hell, after tossing all those forms to the floor what else would you do? F*cking vote?

RIORI Vol 3, Installment 88: Stephen Daldry’s “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close” (2011)

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The Players…

Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Max Von Sydow, with Viola Davis, Jeffery Wright, Zoe Caldwell and John Goodman.

The Story…

A year after the 9/11 attacks claimed his father’s life, young, troubled Oskar finds a mysterious key squirreled away in his dad’s closet. There’s nothing remarkable about this key, save it’s meant for a lockbox, with the name “Black” written on the envelope it was in. But Oskar gets it into his fevered imagination that if he could locate the proper Black this key belongs to, perhaps, just perhaps he can earn a few lost minutes with his late dad.

So our young hero does what any logical, determined and mildly autistic kid would do: scour the five boroughs in search of Mister and/or Missus Black and return the key to its rightful owner.

Piece of cake.

The Rant…

I work with a guy who has Aspergers Syndrome. He’s a pest.

I think he prides himself on it (being pesky, not his condition). He’s loud, garrulous, eager to please, profane and loud. He can also turn on a dime into a petulant bitch if something goes awry with his very practiced routine. He speaks in loud head tones usually reserved for carnival barking, and goes on and on about the obvious. He also has it in his head that if one of us is not responding to he repartee (read: trying to ignore him) we cannot hear him and proceeds to carry on in his indoor voice. You don’t wanna hear his outdoor voice.

Did I mention he’s loud?

Just a mo’. For those who need some science dropped on ya, Aspergers is a low level kind of autism. The guy’s quite highly functional, and capable of a normal work conversation in a normal tone of voice. He’s not antisocial, and a far cry from Raymond Babbit and his Kmart boxers. No. However if his routine is messed up, he gets all grouchy and twitchy and even louder. The dish machine crapped out for the umpteenth time this year, much to his very vocal dismay, even after the old clunker was mended. The garbage disposal hasn’t worked right since.

That’s what he does. He’s a utility man. Washes the dishes, scrubs the pots, mops the floors and does the occasional tinkering. He takes his work very seriously. Almost too seriously. The degree of pride he has in his sanitation skills rivals the discipline a Marine has towards making a bed, snapped sheets and all. Beyond that he labors under the delusion that his expertise takes precedence over the cooks. There’s a degree of truth to this. I’ve often claimed that in a commercial kitchen the dishwashers have the most important job, even beyond the chef’s responsibilities. Think about it: can’t cook nothing without clean pans, right? Right, hence the guy’s overarching pride and free lip-flapping about it. The guy’s a pest.

It’s the nature of the Aspberger beast. The signature behavior of the condition is vigilance in maintaining a routine. That vital routine. If there’s an interruption, those who suffer from this condition can get thoroughly unhinged. It’s all about ritual, like most levels of autism. Recall in Rain Man how aggro Dustin Hoffman got when his TV schedule torn asunder. Aspergers is kinda along those curves, but not out of protection but more for a sense of stability. Until it isn’t.

Now I’m no expert (but I’ve seen them online), and regrettably like most folks what they know of autism is either through Rain Man or Jenny McCarthy, but me being an armchair sociologist I’ve got—and learned through experience thanks to my boisterous co-worker—what divides blown out autism from Aspergers is patterns. Either creating them to drown out the noisome world, a world beyond control and maybe comprehension or maintaining them in order to get through the day. The second isn’t too far removed from the rest of us “normal” people. We follow our own patterns every day. It’s called a routine. Maybe you have one. Maybe I need one. Does The Last Of Us 2 every weeknight at 7.30 (after Jeopardy!, natch) count? Thought not.

However, I think (think, mind you) there’s a third kind of pattern the Aspergers affected follow. Pattern seeking. Keeping an eye out for how maybe A may lead on to B and then on to C and so on. Further trying to make sense of their environment as a mission, where as we kinda bounce between situation to situation. When we drink too much coffee we bolt for the bathroom. We don’t wait until 11 AM, no matter how much our collective bladders scream in tongues.

That makes no sense, but finding a pattern, no matter how minor (or even non-existant) creates a sense of control, even if such control controls nothing. To seek a pattern that may or may not be there is a test of one’s mettle; to make sense of the senseless. Nothing is random. There’s a meaning to everything, if only in the Aspergers mind. This lets the day roll on by.

Take Oskar Schell, for example…

Since the 9/11 attacks, nothing makes sense to young Oskar (Horn). But it should. It better.

Oskar lost his dad Thomas (Hanks) when the Towers fell, and with that tragedy he lost his best friend.

He suffers from Aspergers Syndrome, a mild form of autism. His dad was tuned in to what made his nervous son tick: Oskar being ultra-curious about everything, Thomas devised all sorts of activities relating to the City’s geography, history, topography, etc. “Never stop searching,” was Dad’s mantra. And Oskar took it to heart.

Maybe too well.

A year after his father’s untimely death, with great trepidation Oskar snoops into dad’s closet, untouched by time. Inside he finds a curious blue vase, which slips through his shaky hand and shatters onto the floor. Inside Oskar finds something odd: a small envelope, and inside a small key. No clue was this unlocks. The only hint is the name “Black” on the envelope. The kid’s intrigued. Obviously this key was important to Dad. But why? And what for?

One of Dad’s missions impressed into Oskar’s impressionable, amateur urban explorer imagination was to find the “Sixth Borough,” whatever that meant. Maybe if Oskar can find the owner of the mystery key he might unlock the mystery of the Sixth Borough. If so it might mean some lost time earned back to be with Dad for at least 8 minutes or so.

So a year after the Worst Day, Oskar goes questing for a Best Day. Finally again.

Have key, will travel…

Two words: Oscar bait.

I’m not talking about the main character, either. You may know what I’m referring to. If not, here we go again you yobs. How long have you been visiting here? Really? How many hours? Ah. My bad. Now zip it.

There are movies made to make you think. There are movies to make you feel. There are movies about slobbery aliens hell-bent on global conquest but not before absorbing all the Ben & Jerry’s through their mucus membranes and eventually chomping off Aaron Eckhart’s bobble head (which might also make you think and feel something). We can only hope.

Now we know Hollywood is a business first and a creative outlet last. Marketing fits in there, too somewhere; Black Panther tee shirts made in Vietnam don’t come cheap. Wait, yes they do. Anyway Tinsel Town does its damdest to separate movie audiences from their cash on La La Land’s final product: entertainment. Thinking and feeling is all well and good so long a profit gets made. And that is the end to Hollywood’s means. They don’t expect, nay demand their goods win awards. That’s just icing on the cake, fringe benefit, lagniappe. Bruce Willis shooting things is what the public demands. And more popcorn. Lots more popcorn. And the ninth Harry Potter, God willing and crossed fingers, ya muggles.

Safe to say Hollywood doesn’t waste time and money on artsy-fartsy sh*t. Until it does.

The Blind Side. The Soloist. Crash. What do these flicks have in common? Well, they either got nominated for or won Best Picture. They were also painfully obvious, super transparent attempts to garner some statuettes come February. They starred surefire bankable casts, straight line plots dealing with heavy matters and helmed by name directors. Oh, and they were all pretty easy to digest. And dropped in December, wink wink. Desperate cries for attention from the Academy. Sometimes said cries were even heard. A Beautiful Mind anyone?

Not to say those films were bad. I saw the above and was entertained. I also felt hamstrung by lack of organic storytelling involved. I think that’s the key to any successful Oscar nom: don’t force sh*t. Don’t hammer me over the head with social commentary, try to rape my tear ducts over manufactured tragedy, rip me off, cast Jennifer Aniston, whatever. Don’t make me aware of connecting any dots.

Fluffy movies, those with organic narratives, likable unwrought characters and a lack of pretense can win Best Picture also, sometimes seemingly by accident. Forrest Gump, Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven. All got accolades without padding or pandering. Baiting.

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close commits these crimes, and worst of a presented in a sort of “What’re ya talkin’ ’bout?” kinda shrug. We got Tom Hanks, we got Sandra Bullock, we got 9/11. What more could you need?

Cohesion, for one.

You get the feeling of how a lot of disparate elements were shoehorned into Loud‘s plot, which is pretty aimless to begin with. All through the first act I kept asking myself, “What is going on here?” Despite the story is a straight line (with a few crucial flashbacks), it keeps wandering. We get the whole key thing, right. I’d call the pacing slow. Well, that’s not quite right. Patient is a better word. You have to have some to get through to the second act.

Cobbled together how? Well, first of all our “lead” Hanks. The teaser. Also the Maguffin that sets things in order and not the key (by extension, Hanks is the key as far as Oskar is concerned). Hanks is a terrific, fun actor. Our generation’s Jimmy Stewart. The star of such classic Americana like Big, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan. Wonderful films. With that CV alone no shocker he built up his acting chops to win a pair of Oscars. Good for him. Far cry from Bosom Buddies I tell ya.

So we’re fishing for Oscars. What’s Hanks up to? Wake him up. Dustbust the cheetos off his sweater. The guy who did Billy Elliott? I’m in. How much screen time? What? Um, okay. Gimme the cheetos.

Hanks spends about maybe 15 minutes in the movie, half of them in flashbacks. Audience suckered? Check. His is nothing but a glorified cameo. Admittedly, Hanks makes the most of those precious minutes. His Thomas plays as mature Big (albeit kinda flat), fully engaged in his son and always applying Oskar’s “condition” to his benefit. Wide-eyed wonder stunted by anxiety. Turn a negative into a positive. Thomas is the one guy in the galaxy that gets his son, and Oskar’s is keenly aware of this fact. Even though we have Hanks for precious little time, it’s time well worth having. Even if it’s only a tease.

The flip side (or should I say “blind” side. Heh) is our supporting actor, Bullock. Not a real big fan of hers.  Everything since Speed has been meh. Take it or leave it. She’s a solid actor, don’t get me wrong. Sort of journeyman, though. Here’s the check, play rom-com/action/drama/sci-fi/fantasy/snuff film/whatever. Sure, she has range. Too bad it’s all the same. She’s reliable, and a lot of times I feel underused. Like here in Loud she is painfully underused, if at all. She’s just wallpaper for the first two acts, and makes a poor grieving widow that. It’s tough to invest yourself in a leading character if said character isn’t there. I mean in the Gertrude Stein sense, doy. Bullock’s presence was the break glass in case of an audience’s waning attention span. Strike two.

Another gimmick to get the Academy’s attention: debut role of a child actor. It worked for Anna Paquin, Tatum O’Neal and the moppet that was Ricky Schroeder before he grew up and threw himself into populist doggerel. Horn holds his own well enough, but his Oskar is unlikeable. Insufferable would be a better word. Now I know I gave the lowdown on how Aspergers makes a person poised to be overly affable and cranky in the same breath. I never experienced “royal pain in the ass” from my co-worker. For most of Loud I couldn’t stop asking, “Will I ever be down with Oskar?” Nope, and my inability to engage with Oskar made his quest not engrossing but more along the lines of a Python-esque “Get on with it!” The reason behind why the above actors worked because their roles were not precocious or saccharine but endearing. Oskar is none of these things, just a pain. Strike three.

Oops. We’re losing crucial ground here in search of a statue. Our leads dash any sense of wonder that goes along with the (admittedly interesting but still hampered) plot line. Like I spoke about above, we’re seeking patterns in Loud. Trying to make sense out of the chaotic world. Horn’s Oskar may be a pain in the ass, but he’s at least an interesting pain in the ass. That only goes so far. As I said, the plot is a straight line and made kinetic/muddled by Oskar’s fractured view of the world. What the disturbed kid needs is a foil. Someone to aid him in his quest and help put things in perspective.

Help is on the way.

He shows up in the middle of the second act, and just in time. Max Von Sydow’s mute renter is just what the doctor ordered for Loud. Sydow was nominated for Best Supporting Actor here, and what I saw he was the only one who deserved mention. I never knew how great an actor the man was until I had to watch his face, that craggy, haunted face. He saves the movie from itself I felt. Here’s an honest soul who speaks volumes without speaking. His backstory is steeped in finding, maintaining patterns also. There’s the scene when Oskar meets the renter and fast learns of his curious condition (his troubles with communication reflects Oskar’s) via the notebook he scribbles in to “speak.” Oskar takes note of the hundreds upon hundreds of old notebooks climbing the walls in the renter’s tiny flat. Looks like Oskar’s not the only one who can’t let go of the past and is having trouble what path to follow towards the future.

Of such dysfunction bonds are borne. The renter manages to coax a bit of the kid in Oskar. There’s curiosity, intellect, anxiety and a quest for purpose. The stuff Thomas tried to imbue in his awkward son. Sydow gets this, and assisting Oskar in his quest might help the boy better understand the big, bad, chaotic world. If it weren’t for Sydow’s performance, Oskar would just be a snot and we’d have nothing to hang onto with Loud. Once the renter takes center stage the whole tenor of the film changes. One I enjoyed watching, if only for a limited time.

Speaking of limited time in the good acting department, Loud‘s casting director was very wise to cast Wright as REDACTED. I love Wright. I think he’s been great in every film I’ve seen him in, even the ones that were lame. The guy is very versatile. Although the scene he’s in is technically not the final scene, it was. It presented a sense of closure to Oskar’s mission, and if there is a message to Loud it’s that closure doesn’t exist. The whole cast is wandering, looking for logic that’s not there, nor ever will be. Wright’s hangdog and eventual glow speaks volumes for a bored audience. Considering that, maybe director Daldry was just trolling us all along. Well, minus the bait-and-switch with Hanks. Looking for hope leads nowhere, but that doesn’t mean we stop searching.

It’s been said that the point of a journey is not to arrive (yeah, yeah. Rush lyric. Shaddap). As we follow Oskar up and down the boroughs, looking for helpful patterns, Loud insists at a lot of messages beyond the futility of closure. What is this movie all about? Redemption? Learning how to stop grieving? Learning how to grieve? A maudlin celebration of NYC’s diversity? Oxymorons? Once I was lost, then yadda yadda yadda? Can’t say anything for sure here. All I knew for sure was that Loud was two hours and three minutes of my life I wanted back. Maybe that and Hanks.

You don’t have to be mildly autistic to connect the dots with Loud. Might help. Might also help if Hollywood quit trying to openly dupe us with the carrot and the stick.

Oh, and that ever elusive statue. Need one? Go check out the local cemetery.

The Verdict…

Rent it or relent it? Relent it. Don’t get baited.

Stray Observations…

  • “There’s no such thing as trouble today.”
  • “Schell” is German for “ringing.” As in your ears.
  • Either Oskar better have Aspergers otherwise he’s just really f*cking annoying. Great acting? Toss up.
  • Released on the tenth anniversary, no less.
  • “We need to talk.” “About the mausoleum?”
  • Was that the Wendy’s girl?
  • “I just wanted the lock.”
  • That goddam tambourine.

Next Installment…

Good news! Justin Long and his friends got Accepted into the college of their choice!

Well, of their making would be more accurate.