FLICKERS

Flickers Flashback: THE LONG DAY CLOSES

F L I C K E R S

July 2, 1993

The Long Day Closes

Written and directed by Terence Davis

 

       In Terence Davies’ new movie, The Long Day Closes, a boy living in 1950s Liverpool sits in his house while lights from passing cars flicker through the window behind him. In the next scene, the boy is seated in the balcony of his local movie theatre as the projector’s beam bathes him in a glow similar to that he has just left in his own living room window. At home, the boy sits on the stairs and watches for several screen minutes as the afternoon sun seems to alter the pattern on a throw rug. Later, the boy stands in a doorway and watches as his mother sings alone in the dark. Life is rich for the boy; every moment a potential memory. A director in the making, the boy feels a deep bond with movies, the attendance of which is a special occasion. There in the balcony, beneath the flickering beam of light, his way of seeing is authenticated. Movies grant him the freedom to stare at the light on the living room rug.

       The Long Day Closes is only 82 minutes long but people are walking out of it anyway. I find this disturbing but I know that I too am a much less patient and more fidgety moviegoer than I was as a child, when I only had eyes for the screen. Watching the boy in this movie, so rapt, so still, up there in his balcony, I realized that he could instantly enter the state of complete immersion I so long to reach as an adult moviegoer. The boy may recognize the artistic difference between Tammy and the Bachelor and The Magnificent Ambersons but he doesn’t view one less avidly than the other. If he could see the long pan we see in The Long Day Closes, which glides above a movie audience and then melds into another pan above worshipers in a church, he would not pause to question the intellectual relevance of the filmmaker making a connection between cinema and religion. Instead, with the pure emotional response of a young moviegoer, he would simply purr with pleasure at the beauty of the shot — the rightness of it — and sink even deeper into his seat.

       When I was the age of the boy in The Long Day Closes, my summer afternoon games of softball in the cul-de-sac were often interrupted by sudden, violent thunderstorms. When these storms would come up, I would run into my house and change out of my damp clothes and meet my mother at the top of the stairs leading to the second floor of our split level house. My mother has a deathly fear of lightning, and short of hiding in the closet, the stairway, protected by the inner walls of the house, was the best she could do to escape the flashes. Lightning made my mother jump in her skin. We would sit on the stairs, my mother and me, in near darkness. The only light beyond the occasional flashes of light through the living room window came from the weak glow of the kitchen’s stove light spilling into the foyer below us. Invariably, I would have changed into my pajamas and slippers and would sit on the stair at my mother’s feet and in between flashes of light and sips from the iced tea glass she held in the palm of her hand — a folded square napkin wrapped around its base — my mother would tell me stories of her life. About how she met my father and married young and had too many babies too soon and tried to hold, often in vain, onto her self, as her life sped on faster than she could catch up to. Lightning made my mother jump but it also made a space for her to pause and breathe and catch up to herself, just a bit. I was only a boy and although I don’t remember all the stories she told me, I do remember, to borrow a line from John Updike, the way “Lightning kept taking her photograph.”

       Sitting in a screening of The Long Day Closes, watching the boy observe his mother and the way light moved through their lives, I thought of my mother and went home and called her and had the most marvelous conversation about lightning and about memory. All of which is a heavy burden to place on one movie and on you, its potential audience. You may well go to The Long Day Closes and grow restless and fidgety and that would be okay by me. A few days ago, I walked out of an undoubtedly great European film because I wasn’t able to meet it halfway. I just couldn’t sit there. I forgave myself. They’re only movies, after all, and we get something or we don’t and we go home and we feed the cat. Meaning can come at a red light. Such is the beauty and terror of living.

       Go. See. Who knows?

 

Chuck Wilson

 

 

 

Special thanks to Matthew, whose generous spirit inspired me to go dig this one up.

 

from L.A. Weekly (2003) RYAN & TATUM AT THE VISTA

Luna Vista

Thursday, August 28, 2003

One hundred and fifty or so movie geeks, including myself, have come on a mercifully cool summer night to Silver Lake’s Vista theater for a 30th-anniversary screening of Peter Bogdanovich’s 1973 black-and-white comedy, Paper Moon. But first there is a handprints-in-cement ceremony for its director and two of its stars, Ryan O’Neal and his daughter, Tatum, who at age 10 won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film (beating out her genius co-star, the late Madeline Kahn, as well as The Exorcist’s limber-headed teen, Linda Blair).

Ryan and Tatum are late, so the three-man handprint crew continually refresh their work, muttering apologies as they push a wobbly, cement-dripping wheelbarrow back and forth through the crowd. Bogdanovich, who hasn’t abandoned his 30-year predilection for striped shirts and ascots, has been here awhile signing autographs. With the surprisingly large contingent of flash-popping paparazzi all to himself, he has already been photographed sinking his hands into the Vista’s own eclectic Walk of Fame, right above those of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen and the cast of Swingers.

Unexpectedly, Griffin O’Neal, wayward son of Ryan, is center-carpet, looking tanned, fit and hyperactive. Like his sister, he was a child star (sorta, kinda) but is best remembered for youthful brushes with the law and rehab. Tonight, he’s remarkably attentive to the clutch of frenzied autograph hounds, several of whom will shriek in astonishment a half-hour from now when Griffin offers to take their 8-by-10 Ryan O’Neal glossies inside to be signed by Dad.

A black stretch limo glides into view, and Papa Ryan bounds out, alone, and is immediately encircled by the insistent faithful, who thrust one-sheets and vinyl soundtrack albums at him. O’Neal, who is reportedly in remission from chronic myeloid leukemia, has shed the puffy face of illness and looks terrific. Watching him deftly scrawl his name with one hand while holding an Evian bottle with the other is another kind of reminder: Once a movie star (remember Love Story, What’s Up Doc?, Barry Lyndon?), always a movie star.

Entertainment Tonight reporter Bob Goen — E.T. at the Vista! — quickly snags O’Neal for a “How does it feel 30 years later?” soundbite, and ends by asking where Tatum is, as if hoping for a whiff of scandal. O’Neal waves the query away, “Tatum’s always late,” then darts into the lobby, Bogdanovich at his side.

There’s a pause, then a stir as the autograph freaks turn and take flight, for there is Tatum O’Neal, brilliantly blond, half a block down, getting out of an SUV with her three teenage children. A brief signing frenzy ensues, right there next to the car, and then she’s under the marquee, looking slightly bewildered but lovely nonetheless in a black pantsuit. Just then, a taut, 40-something woman blocks Tatum’s path (there’s zero security here), hands her a small pink-wrapped package, and when the actress thanks her, the woman shakes her head. “Oh, no. Thank you,” she says, and locks O’Neal in a gaze of such alarming telepathic intensity that I think: That’s what John Lennon saw.

Suddenly, Ryan is at her side, his bearish arms wrapping around her, and as her forehead falls forward to rest briefly on his shoulder, I hear her say softly, “Daddy.”

Soon after, star and co-star, along with Paper Moon cinematographer Lazslo Kovacs, are kneeling, legs ungracefully akimbo, as they sink their outstretched palms deep into the Vista’s pavement. Flashbulbs blind, photographers shout, and those of us standing just behind the stars take a half-step back, stunned a bit by the force of those flashes.

Inside the theater, the O’Neal clan settles into one row, and Bogdanovich sits between his two stars. Griffin splits early, Ryan holds court for well-wishers, and Tatum heads for the lobby, her eyes rolling as her son calls out, “Mom! Get me a hot dog!” The lights finally dim and the movie begins, preceded by its original trailer. On cue, the audience applauds the director’s name, cheers Ryan’s, and claps firmly at the credit for Madeline Kahn. And maybe we’re thrown into sudden grief for Kahn, because no one applauds the words “Introducing Tatum O’Neal.” There’s an awkward silence, until her father exclaims, loudly, “Yeah!” and throws his newly immortalized hands together, initiating a swelling round of praise for his daughter, the Oscar winner.

—Chuck Wilson

Rent This Movie:LARS AND THE REAL GIRL

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL

       Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling), 27, is so shy that when his pregnant sister-in-law, Karin (Emily Mortimer), knocks on his door to invite him to breakfast, he doesn’t greet her, he hides. Nervously, like a man avoiding a certified letter from the IRS, Lars stands at the edge of his front window, peeking out, clearly hoping she’ll give up and walk away. But Karin, who lives mere steps from the converted garage into which Lars moved when his older brother Gus (Paul Schneider) brought home his bride, knows that Lars is in there, so she holds her ground. Reluctantly, Lars goes to the door. He goes because he’s as polite as he is shy, and because he understands that Karin is the best person he (or Gus) will ever know. Like the mother who died when he was born, who lives on in his mind, Karin is full to bursting with loving hopes for Lars. It is Karin’s insistence that the Lindstrom brothers have fuller, better selves hiding within that drives this funny and wonderfully human new comedy.

     What happened to make Lars so people averse? One of the beauties of Nancy Oliver’s pitch perfect, Oscar-nominated screenplay — her first, after having written episodes of Six Feet Under — is that the sources of Lars’ pain are never explicitly explained. He doesn’t have a third act summing-up speech. His mother died, leaving Lars with a father who wasn’t so nice. Or maybe he was. Gus and Lars have differing opinions on that, a note of contention that feels true to how family stories play out; one son’s hero is another son’s adversary. Either way, Lars is wary of the world. It hurts him, literally, to be touched, a fact no one appears to know, and which may be why he’s so reluctant to open the door to Karin (she’s a hugger), or accept the attentions of Margo (Kelli Garner), the beautifully plain co-worker who keeps throwing herself at Lars, who goes online instead and buys himself a lover — a life-sized, anatomically correct doll (in hot pants) named Bianca.

Too proper to actually sleep with his new mate, Lars, who’s suddenly become quite verbose, asks Karin and Gus if Bianca can sleep in their spare room, a request they’re too stunned to deny. Bianca the blow-up doll moves in, Lars starts grinning, and on the advice of the local doctor (Patricia Clarkson) — who just happens to have a psychotherapy degree — Karin, Gus and eventually the entire town (a very small one) is playing along, pretending, for Lars sake, that Bianca is an actual person, one in need of patience, affection, and twice-daily wardrobe changes.

       If this were a Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller movie, Bianca might inspire American Pie style sexual antics, but director Craig Gillespie’s broadest comic stroke comes early on, when Lars abruptly disposes of a carnation he’s supposed to be giving to poor Margo, who looks dismayed but not surprised that her would-be lothario is clueless about girls and flowers. Once Bianca arrives, Gillespie relies for laughs on the disbelieving faces of those who meet her, particularly Gus, whose comic freak-out slowly turns to anger as he realizes that he’s being forced to go along with pure irrationality. Gradually, weirdness gives way to everyday routine — Bianca at the dinner table, Bianca being tucked in at night — and Gus’s dismay tilts toward sadness, one born of grief for his unhinged brother, and guilt at having failed him. Lars and the Real Girl is the story of Lars waking up to life’s possibilities, but I think the fuller and more interesting journey belongs to Gus, who is first amused and then haunted by a question Lars asks him in the kitchen one day, out of the blue: “How did you know you were a man?”

       This may be a question brothers never stop asking one another — brothers are forever on the seesaw together — and watching Gus process Lars’ query really got to me. All things revolve around Lars, but Gus is the secret heart of this movie. He's low-key and ordinary — a rarity in movies — and deeply in love with his wife. If Gus were the exact same guy at the end of this movie as he’d been at the film’s beginning, well, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But he isn’t. The presence of Lars presses Gus to think about their father, and though this is never stated outright, he's thinking too about the kind of father he himself will soon be. “How did you know you were a man?” Lars asked, and trying to figure out his own answer to that question triggers a momentary fissure in Gus. He breaks, and then — in the loving space provided by Karin, who saw the moment coming — he reconfigures himself, as brother, husband, and father-to-be. In a film that’s all about people taking small turns toward grace, Gus’ internal shift forward is the sweetest of all. (Chuck Wilson)

for Jordan   

from the FLICKERS vault

Return of the Kid, or Mr. Critic Takes a Holiday 

I think it was somewhere in the second hour of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that I sank down in my seat, pulled my jacket up under my chin and let myself be 12 years old again. Blessedly, I wasn’t there as a movie critic. One of the few benefits of being the second- or third-string guy in the film section is that you don’t always have to take notes; you can go and slouch down in your seat and just be yourself, or, rather, your truest movie self, which isn’t necessarily the exact same person who plays at being an adult in the sunlit world, or the self who takes half-legible notes at other movies, like a beauty-contest judge giving poise and elocution marks. Tonight, I was just a guy who sat down in the fifth row with one of his best pals (I’m lucky to have more than one) at his side, stared hopefully up at the screen and was granted the one thing he needed most in the world — a sense of wonder. And right after that, wonder’s adjunct — joy. Tears too, for balance, and because Frodo and Sam broke my heart and because, for those three hours and 20 minutes, my friend Jordan and I became those two hobbits, linked for all time by hardship and loyalty. Sure enough, afterward, saying goodnight at the car, we swore to each other (quite unnecessarily) that we would always carry one another up Mount Doom. And I drove home happy, because he’s got my back, and because this epic, aching film reminded me that I haven’t seen everything after all; that movies are miraculous; and that within me, still, is the kid who used to pull his legs up under him, to be taller, to see more of the screen, who wondered, “How do they do that?” and at the same time didn’t care, being grateful, simply, that there were shadow makers who knew the trick for taking him out of his body, out of his world. Which felt, then and now, like an act of salvation. (Chuck Wilson

Flickers flashback: October '03

The Station Agent

When four feet five inches tall Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) takes up residence in Newfoundland, New Jersey, it quickly becomes apparent that the townspeople haven’t seen many dwarfs. On his first day, Fin walks to the local convenience store, and just as he’s reaching for a carton of butter, the old lady owner snaps his picture, with a camera she appears to have ever at the ready, like a mini-market Diane Arbus. Fin pauses in surprise, and then continues shopping, seemingly nonplussed, a man long resolved to the inherent weirdness of the tall.

          Fin’s mentor at a Hoboken model train shop died a few weeks ago, and much to Fin’s surprise, left his assistant a tiny plot of land in Newfoundland, upon which sits the town’s now obsolete train depot. Neither Fin nor the actor playing him give much away, not at first anyway, but Fin is probably thrilled. He’s a trainman. Late at night, he lies on his bed (an old couch) and listens to the them roaring past his new home, heading for elsewhere. Their weight and clatter makes the sofa bed tremble, and although writer-director Tom McCarthy doesn’t linger, it seems likely that Fin doesn’t shut his eyes until after those cars have rattled past, until he’s sure the trains are still running on time.

          For Fin, there’s important restoration work to be done—a lifetime’s worth — and yet people — and who needs them? — keep knocking at the station door. First, and most persistently, like a gnat you can’t swat away, comes Joe (Bobby Cannavale), an adorable, can’t-sit-still, won’t-shut-up Cuban who parks his ailing father’s hot dog truck outside the depot everyday and who desperately wants a pal. Joe’s benignly hot for the haunting Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), who is so klutzy and distracted that she nearly runs Fin down, twice in the same hour. Initially, Fin isn’t any more forthcoming with her than he is Joe, but Olivia’s persistent too, and one night, over a bottle of apology wine (for almost running him over), she tells Fin that her little boy died two years ago. At the news, Fin stares, stunned (Olivia: “Could you not look at me right now?”), for here is someone with more of a right to sadness than he, and that, I think, is the moment Fin reengages with the world. Suddenly, he’s needed.

Despite a flurry of melodrama in the third act, not much happens in this movie, except that three people form a bond, for a lifetime, or maybe for just right now. Either way is fine. Joe, always talking, keeps trailing along behind Fin, pretending to love trains too, until, suddenly, he does. Olivia, whose husband has left her, keeps giving them rides home, and soon, they’re a trio, walking the tracks. And one day, to fulfill a dream of Fin’s, he and Joe take Olivia’s video camera and that lopsided tin can hot dog truck and go racing alongside a speeding train, like storm hunters pursuing a tornado. Fin, riding shotgun, proves to be a lousy cameraman and accidentally turns the camera on himself, forever capturing a glimpse of his own face — eyes wide, soul thrilled. Joe’s beside him, driving wildly, and whooping and hollerin’ like a cowboy roping his first steer. The pursuit is a rush, but mostly, Joe’s happy because he’s made Fin happy. They’re friends. It’s a quick flash of a scene, and yet, watching those two — so ecstatically engaged with life — I thought, Oh. This is what I’ve forgotten, and what Joe knows instinctively: Joy doesn’t just come. Sometimes you have to chase after it. You have to meet it halfway.

-Chuck Wilson