I watched this today because it’s one of those movies I can watch any time but it was midway that I realised maybe I’d subconsciously chosen it for another reason. It connects to a lot of the movies I’ve watched recently and the feelings I’ve had watching them – from Enchanted to Penelope to Riding in Cars with Boys the other day, I even found similarities to Once here this time around. I’d never watched the introduction on the DVD of this movie before, and in it, Geoff Andrew says some things about the ending that my gut instinct disagreed with a lot, dismissing the romance at the start as meaningless teenage meanderings and such, as if the romance between Guy and Geneviève was never meant to bloom nor could have possibly bloomed, even if he’d returned to her in time. I took as much issue with that idea as I have recently with this idea that innocence lost can never be regained, etc, that I won’t go into yet again.

But as the movie went on, I did find myself looking at it in a different way from before – dare I say it, with some aging mature wisdom on my side. There are a lot of questions I’ve had over this movie in the past, like for example why I continue to love it so much when so many of the characters do things that I would never usually find acceptable. Everybody in the movie is in some way “after something” that they never ask for directly and honestly – both Guy and Geneviève in some way give up waiting for their love, the less said about Geneviève’s mother the better, Madeleine never declares her obvious love for Guy, and Roland Cassard, though perhaps the most admirable character in the movie, is always presented as a bit of a slimeball who looks down on the others – here to the rescue, yes, but through little real effort on his part. I think in the end it’s this full package of flawed characters illustrating perhaps precisely how “people things” tend to transpire whether we like them or not. Even Geneviève’s mother has a lot of pearls of wisdom, though delivered a little harshly (not to mention shrilly lol) at times.

But in the end, any amount of babble like this becomes fairly moot once you’re faced with the movie itself. From the opening title onwards – that rain falling as though from the camera itself on the people of Cherbourg, as though we the audience are already crying on the movie – this movie is simply pure magic that I could bawl through from beginning to end. The music is sublime, the colours are eye-popping, and the characters are, as I hopefully illustrated above, surprisingly complicated given the context. It has the most conflicted but beautiful ending I’ve ever seen, and I still react to it today as I did over 10 years ago when I first saw it: my stomach almost physically churns and tightens, I’m overjoyed but crushed, tears fall down my face over a wretchedly human smile on my lips. This movie isn’t beautiful … it’s beauty. If this review reads like a mess than it’s just an illustration of how the movie affects me, lol, and probably an explanation of why there hasn’t previously been a review of it here despite it being one of my all-time faves.

I can’t not give this movie less than 5 hearts anymore – perhaps particularly since I changed my ratings from stars to hearts lol. Even the corny jokes (not to mention gag Bono) worked more on me third time around here and the good here is so good you just can’t help but surrender. It owes a terrific debt to one of my all-time faves, Pink Floyd: The Wall, not just in “Strawberry Fields” as mentioned below but also the whole “I Want You” scene is pretty much “Another Brick in the Wall”; and though Julie Taymor can’t (yet) hope to entirely compete with Alan Parker, it’s certainly a worthy comparison.

It’s all about the freedom the movie has – leaping from a Bono cameo to Eddie Izzard pretty much sums it up (incidentally, as I commented while watching it this time with my sister, it’s not so much the mere appearance and singing from Bono that wows here; it’s when he speaks following the song when you truly realise how it’s perhaps the most selfless thing he’s ever done); from a gorgeously scored climax intercutting Vietnam and Colombia University to the completely random but equally beautiful women in the sea over the eponymous song sequence. It’s a movie that’s undeniably “all over the place” and yet you can’t quite fathom how it could be any other way. I’ve watched it more now than any other film of the past year, and that stat will only increase as time goes on, so the watchability factor definitely comes into play in the rating too. And if I haven’t said enough about how incredible Evan Rachel Wood is, then mark my words I’ll have plenty more to add in the future, she blows my mind, nevermind every movie or scene I see her in, every frame.

January 10th, 2008:

I really need to start half stars here, I think, lol. That I couldn’t resist watching this again so soon should speak well of the movie in itself. When it’s good, like in “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “Strawberry Fields” as mentioned below, or the exploding newspaper over the instrumental climax to “Day in the Life” – not to mention just about every second Evan Rachel Wood occupies the screen – it’s great. When it’s bad, though – and I’d be amazed if even the most ardent of fans don’t feel this during at least some portion of the movie, though I’d personally cut half an hour or more – it’s even worse than I thought on the first viewing. I still really don’t know what to make of the rollercoaster of love and hate this movie takes me on. I’m often tempted to use the phrase “flawed masterpiece” but more often than not I ultimately fall down on one side or the other … but here … I really don’t think that phrase has ever applied more to a movie. I think I’ll be coming back to this many more times.

7th January, 2008:

Ah Julie Taymor First, this movie tackles the whole High School Musical thing into the dirt in just one 2-3 minute scene (“I Wanna Hold Your Hand”). There follow a plethora of standalone interpretations of Beatles songs set loosely to a little love story (rather than the other way around as some plot summaries will tell you :P) but I’m not sure it ever comes together in quite the way it should and for a Julie Taymor movie, no matter what anyone tells you, it’s really not that startlingly visual. Okay, no, it comes close to Pink Floyd’s The Wall during “Strawberry Fields” but that’s all I’ll give it; let’s face it, for the title track alone she had the Rufus Wainwright/Dakota Fanning and Fiona Apple/Paul Thomas Anderson music videos to contend with.

It’s just so about the Beatles songs; even the ones that aren’t sung come in in lines like, “She came in through the bathroom window!” and “when I’m sixty-four …” ... by the time a character called Dr. Robert walks in, you’ve practically cringed yourself inside out so it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m quite the pushover sometimes, so by the time it came to the two girls singing “love, love, love” to a couple of police officers on a rooftop as the hero (Jude) sings out for his Lucy (yeh), I can’t deny I was emotionally armless and I for one will be returning to this again one day, just to see if I was just another sucker or if there’s actually something here.

Watch if you can’t get enough of Beatles covers, pretty people and good lipsync; but don’t expect a whole lot more. For the visuals, I’d personally sooner watch Julie Taymor’s Titus again; for the music, I’ll keep praying Cirque du Soleil will tour their “Love” show or at least produce a DVD, in the meantime I recommend I Am Sam. Though it has its moments, this movie is in places so cheesy and simplistic in the worst way. I think it could’ve been much much more.

“Damn, Hansel – I can’t believe you’re not a girl. You’re so fine …”

The moment this began it made me feel for a moment like maybe I’d been right to avoid it for so long, despite all the things that for obvious reasons indicated to me I’d be an instant fan the moment I came into contact with it. What can I say but that it touched some places in me that get touched so little I tend sometimes to forget them entirely ‘cos they hurt too much through lack of touching. If I haven’t hinted at it lately, let it now be said that there are times when I really almost wouldn’t mind an angry inch of my own if it was the only available option; it’d be like the lesser of two evils or something. The joy and self-assuredness expressed by the characters here is frequently overwhelming to me.

Hansel/Hedwig first struck me as far from the sexiest transexual to walk the celluloid screen, but she grew on me – we basically see her at her highs and lows, at times indistinguishable from any real girl, at times a broken mess; likewise the music, at first struck me as not my taste at all, but it eventually works its way to a slew of numbers that threaten to never stop making the hairs on my neck stand on end. It’s kind of Myra Breckinridge meets Rent (a connection that definitely goes beyond the cute direct reference) and I’ll absolutely check it out again. I’ve already got a whole bunch of tribute albums and cast recordings that I’ve been holding off listening to till I saw the movie itself, and now I can’t wait

Lawd. I started watching this the other night but I was too tired in the end. I came to it today truly wanting to like it. I love the concept – I love the normality of the opening with Dorothy at the family get-together, it’s just so beautifully down-to-earth and the music is great there too (“Don’t know what I’m made of / Why am I afraid of … feeling?”)

But then Dorothy goes to Oz. Now, ever since Meet the Robinsons, I’m pretty careful about first impressions, and the “look” of Oz here certainly had the same effect as the future did there. The make-up (by Stan Winston no less) is hideous, the costumes wild but pretty lazy in all (like someone just went into a thrift store or a school’s theatre wardrobe and grabbed anything wild-looking)

My head just got buried more and more in my hands as the music got more indigestible and the Sesame Street quality just devoured the thing entirely. I don’t want to compare it to the 1939 movie – pretty much anything looks bad by comparison – but even coming to it with the highest desire to work with it and find the goodness with in it, I struggled painfully. I nearly died laughing when the lion lets rip with, “I’m a lion!” ROFL … I just kept feeling like Homer Simpson in the “Homer’s Phobia” episode of The Simpsons in the steelworks … “oh my god, what’s happening now?!” lol. Then it goes absurdly dark at the end! Then they all get naked? lol. It’s just a maddening mess.

I’m inclined to say it could be the worst film I’ve ever seen – but there are a lot of plus points that make me understand where its fans are coming from. The sets in themselves are often stunning. Some of the music is catchy, even in the case of “Can I Go On?” slightly moving. The rainbow in the sprinklers at the end is simply inspired, and Richard Pryor completely steals the movie when he finally appears. I’m interested in a review I read on the IMDb that says how the Broadway show was pretty spectacularly different. Whatever … it’s certainly a curio, worth watching if you’re a fan of cinema, musicals, or just plain Oz … but I personally found it pretty damn excruciating, in a geniuinely “Make it stop!” kind of way. I think the credits say it all – written by Joel Schumacher, produced by Rob Cohen, and directed by Sidney Lumet. Too many cooks spoil the broth indeed … especially when they’re that differently minded.

“Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time …”

Spoiler Warning I guess – not that you could possibly spoil this one.

Y’know, call me dumb just one more time but even at the Oscars after seeing the movie 3 times, I didn’t fully listen to that lyric until now. As the last couple of reviews might’ve shown, I’m still bobbing up and down a little off the ripples left by the wave of depression Enchanted left me with, and I couldn’t help but notice that this movie ends quite the same way as that one with the “lovers” at the outset not ending up together; but, I don’t know, here I bought it with tears in my eyes, perhaps because I believed they made the right choice … perhaps because I believed they knew there was still some work ahead … perhaps because in the end, it’s a matter of consistency, and this movie is 100% so.

While so many things now tell you, “if it’s f*cked, move on or replace it,” this movie presents us with a character who brings a lowly hoover for a busker to fix rather than simply buy a new one because all she can even afford to give him for his songs is 10 cents. It simply asks people to make an effort, all the while telling the inspiring story of someone far too old by society’s standards to be still living with his pa finally taking the steps to making a name for himself as a singer-songwriter in tandem with fixing an old and clearly dear relationship.

Again I find myself commenting on the thing I should find annoying about this movie that proves the movie’s brilliance by the sheer fact that it doesn’t annoy me. There’s a whole sequence that basically shows how everyone is trying to be a musician; from the trying to get the loan and the bank guy breaking into song, cutting to the street and a random busker drumming, to the party where it’s a requirement that you sing. I hate this kind of thing normally not because it’s false – on the contrary, it’s the truest and mostly most beautiful thing there is – but it’s very demoralising to anyone (in which case I guess, lol, everyone) wanting to get their songs heard. But like I say, it’s amazing that this really never gets to me like I’d think it would in this one.

Then there are the peripheral characters. The man in the clothes shop telling Guy, “You’re gorgeous,” the aforementioned bank guy, and my god, the studio guy – that in itself is the series of shots I’d personally say define this movie, him going from “these bunch of f*ckin …” to the total childlike enthusiasm at the mixing desk when he realises how good they are … it’s just an astonishing few pieces of film.

I’m just amazed by how much more I got out of this movie this viewing after seeing it at least 3 times already … you get this initial feeling like it’s that typical variety of indie movie where they just point the camera at two people and improvise or something, in this case perhaps buoyed by the quality of the songs … but, simply that whole thing about the hoover, I’d just never realised the significance of it as it compares to the big picture, the whole idea of fixing something that, in general, in today’s world, is more often just slung out for a new model, it just really shows how beautifully written and considered it is. It’s such an important message for the world right now.

December 3rd, 2007:

I’m slightly annoyed I didn’t get to see this a lot earlier than I ultimately have, because as soon as it began I realised that no matter what it did, it would be a miracle if it lived up to the expectations I’ve built up for it over the months and months of hype and general gushing of those who had seen it. It sounded perfect – in a nutshell, as a more recent review I read put it, it’s the Irish, musical, Before Sunset. The songs are beautiful even if, like me, you’ve heard them dozens of times before the movie begins.

For almost the whole first 85 minutes, I had that feeling. It’s not living up to what I psyched myself into expecting, etc, all the while cursing the destructive power of hype. “It’s good,” I thought – the music’s great of course, the story well-paced, the performances perfect – “but it’s not overwhelming me.”

But it’s all in the ending. When it all comes together, in at most 3 little shots. And it was literally like one second I was dry and the next my face was streaked with tears, and they didn’t stop till the last credit rolled off the screen. This movie is just too beautiful for words.

“Hearts will never be made practical until they are made unbreakable.”

It truly is the happiest film ever made. And perfect to boot, like, literally, perfect, so much so that I don’t feel I need to say a lot more than that. I was really drawn to the sheer number of immediately identifiable icons in the movie this zillionth time watching it – it’s something I’ve really started to be interested in in a lot of movies recently: like just those props and simple images you can remove entirely from their context in the movie and yet their association is so indelible that pretty much anyone will know the movie from them. The gingham dress, the ruby slippers, the green-faced witch, a witch in a bubble, another under a house, the poppy field, the Emerald City, the yellow brick road, the red sand hourglass – and of course the scarecrow, tin man and lion. Any one of these things captures the imagination enough in itself. To put them altogether in one ninety minute swoop with the songs and the simply perfectly cast Judy Garland tying it all together is for me to practically bottle everything it means to dream.

For me it mostly comes down to those last scenes; the wizard declaring, “No I’m not a bad man – just a bad wizard,” bestowing the gifts upon Dorothy’s friends at the same time really highlighting the worthlessness of the societal things that package us like diplomas, medals and testimonials, in turn proffering the slightly cheesy but no less truthful notion that it really is just who we are that counts; and of course, “Oh Auntie Em … There’s No Place Like Home,” that swell of music that never fails to make me cry my eyes out.

Yes, I guess it comes to the same almost dreary happiness in its close that I hated in Enchanted – “But that’s so easy!” the Tin Man even declares when Glinda reveals to Dorothy the means to get home – but it’s the way it elevates that normality to something fantastic, never dismissing the wonder of imaginary Oz (if it is imaginary at all, I feel the urge to add) in the process. I was reminded of that wonderful line at the end of the last Harry Potter book, “Of course it’s all happening in your head … but why on earth should that mean it isn’t real?” I’m babbling and I’ve done too much of that lately. It’s just a perfect movie, okay?

“I’m only 6.”
“You won’t always be.”

I’ve waited far too long to see this one and the longer I waited and the more excited I got about it, the more scared I got of how I’d react to it. That signpost quote above as to where the movie might be going told me that this dread wasn’t going to let up until the very closing scene. That it started up so much like the glorious Elf (which I’m amazed doesn’t dominate most reviews, btw, so glaring are the similarities) gave me hope … but egh, let’s just start with that beginning animation, shall we?

At one point Patrick Dempsey (as a quite typically joyless New York single father man man) tells Amy Adams (as the angerless Disney Princess Giselle recently transformed into a human in a very rushed set-up), “It’s like you escaped from a Hallmark card or something,” – and that’s what the animation at the start here resembles more to me than the classic Disney style one would think they were trying to emulate.

It amazes me that so many people have felt nostalgia for the classics watching these early scenes; have they even watched them since they were 6? It’s like the years of producing second-rate sequels (don’t get me wrong, some of them are good as I’ve said time and again; but notice how few of them feature human characters …) have blurred the old style out of the animators’ muscle memory. The animated opening feels more like another studio, like Fox or Dreamworks, doing a very corny and tired mickey-take of everything everybody always thinks is “wrong” with the old Disney animations. If this is what Disney animations would look like were they still producing theatrical hand-drawn pictures, then I’m honestly kinda glad they stopped.

Though I’ve always jokingly said, “It’s all Disney’s fault,” when it comes to the subject of depression and woes of the world etc; I did it only last week, in fact, watching a show about self-help books – like, Disney told a whole generation, or two, or even three, that “dreams came true if you follow your heart” and, yes, in most cases that’s just not true and such lofty ideals can lead to crushing disappointment. Don’t even get me started on, “what if the dreams your heart contains don’t fit society’s pre-ordained plan for your demographic?”

But more recently, I’ve gotta say, I’ve started to believe even more that the failing is really just in people at large following the same rules and making the same mistakes that society jokingly excuses as the unavoidable norm. That old thing that we’re beautiful and perfect little children and then we grow up and that there’s no reclaiming innocence once it’s lost so you might as well just accept misery as a fact of life. I no longer buy it – humans are much more capable than that if – like a better movie Bridge To Terabithia, which I watched for the umpteenth time just last night, says – they just keep their mind open. The moment where Giselle fails to sing back to the Prince here made me feel like I was dying inside because the movie was suddenly taking just exactly that horrible turn I’d feared from the start. It’s amazing to me that a movie like this takes such a stance while even a movie like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the one praising the power of the imagination to overpower every sad restraint the world can impose on us.

Enchanted certainly has its moments. I can’t deny Amy Adams’ wondrousness, even though it all gets mostly stripped away in the end; like my mum gasped, “she looks so … ordinary ...”; Giselle seems “happy enough” as do Morgan and Robert in the end. But, and I apologise to those who will surely think I’m overthinking this and desperately looking for a problem, for me it’s all just too real; dare I say even, too “mature”. Do we really want Disney suggesting that “happy enough might be as good as it gets” as someone said in that show I mentioned earlier? Like the opening animation, it all just feels horribly revisionist (not “delightfully” so as one review I’ve read put it): like Disney is “correcting” things that other people told it were mistakes in its past work. Nothing needed revising here; the girl saving the day isn’t a challenging surprise anymore in 2007 … at least, it shouldn’t be. Disney really shouldn’t be so ashamed of their dreaming in the past, and I’m worried they may have ruined their whole catalogue of classics for the current generation of children exposed to this cynical ribbing of the formula.

I’m sure others will think the exact opposite; that this approach is probably a good thing; and I guess they’re probably right, since in the world as it is, it probably, unfortunately, is the most lucrative option. Me, I’ll follow Idina Menzel and the Prince back down the manhole anyday, thanks kindly. Honestly I wish the movie could’ve convinced me that “getting real” was a thing worth doing … but personally I wanted to be more, I don’t know, enchanted? Was that a weird thing to expect given the title? Now I have to wait 20 years for a Girl on the Bridge type sequel. Let’s call it “Disenchanted” ... wherein Idina and the Prince come back from Andalasia just in time to rescue poor Morgan about to jump off the Empire State such woe is future modern life. Can we please start telling our children they can change this nightmare instead of just training them to put up with it? A credit card as fairy godmother? It’s a cute gag, and I laughed, so great is Rachel Covey’s delivery … but thinking back on it, I find it deeply troubling.

I was sure I already had a review of this so this might end up a little on the short side. I’m pretty sure I’ve said something about Erzsebet Foldi before, that’s why I thought I’d reviewed it already … ‘cos what I thought I’d written was, how is this movie the only thing she was ever in?! An amazing dancer, beautiful to behold, so natural before the camera, and perfectly cast as Scheider’s loving, precious, brotherless, generous (“underlined 3 times” lol) daughter … yet this is her only film credit, it’s incredible.

Anyway, clearly the reason I watched this this weekend is due to the sad passing of Roy Scheider this past week. Of course, at 76, he had a great innings – certainly better than Bob Fosse, who he basically portrays here – but it still saddened me to hear of it. This movie already had resonance outside of its surface appearance due to just how much Fosse put himself into it. Now – at least, this week, I find it serves as a perfect farewell to Scheider. It struck me during the last scene how it might strike some as a tad tasteless to watch it at such a time, ‘cos I know there are a lot of people who prefer death be confined to grave grief, black suits, hearses and mourning; but I think it’s perfect in its attitude to death … that celebration scene of “Bye Bye Life” countered so slapfaced by the snapback to “the only reality” at the end, the body bag being zipped up.

You can see Scheider’s Gideon so many ways – ego is always mentioned in reviews of the movie; it’s easy to sense he has no self-awareness, doesn’t know what he’s doing or who he’s hurting etc. I think he has total self-awareness; he just doesn’t care. And to me the film’s biggest comment is: why should he, when death is so inevitable? It’s a kind of Fight Club / American Beauty type message, as dangerous as it is profound. I still don’t know what to make of these movies entirely, some days I love them and some days I realise what an ass I am to love them so; I know that when I’m watching they are fun though; that Scheider’s performance is incredible; that the song and dance numbers start brilliant and only get better as the movie goes on; that we’re lucky to even have one movie featuring Erzsebet Foldi; and that anything that can make me get in such a twist reviewing is pretty much always worthy of 5 hearts.