BEFORE: No Monday movie, as I came home at 1 am on Sunday night/Monday morning, and fell asleep sitting at my desk for a couple hours - when I woke up I figured I should probably go to bed in a real bed for once, and then of course had to work on Monday morning. Today I tried to sleep all day to catch up but that didn't really work, I only made it to 11 am. But anyway it's Day 2 of my own personal De Niro Con, even though the real one ended on Sunday.
Now, the real De Niro Con had a stellar line-up, films like "Mean Streets" , "Goodfellas", "Raging Bull", "Taxi Driver", "The Deer Hunter", "The Godfather Part II", and (for some reason) "New York, New York" and a special conversation with De Niro and Tarantino after a 35mm screening of "Jackie Brown", but I've seen ALL of those movies, so there's probably no way that my version can compare, I'm kind of left with the crumbs after years of dining on the main entrees from Bobby D's career. (I feel like I can call him "Bobby D" now because you know, I saw him crossing the sidewalk and entering the press tent that one time...)
But of course we know Mr. De Niro co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival, and just look at the ripple effect - years later the festival is bigger than ever, and that resulted in me working 6 long-ish shifts, and that's a bump in my paycheck next month. So I owe him for that, and I'm paying it back with this week's movies, even if they don't represent the cream of the crop. I'm sore and I'm tired but I can still make it through one of his films late on a Monday night. Tomorrow's film might be more of a challenge...
The upside here is that I noticed that things felt maybe one day off, if I go by the very arbitrary mark of actors' birthdays. Laurie Metcalf's birthday was June 16 and I watched "Somewhere in Queens" on June 15. I missed another one by one day last week - now I'm sure there will be tons of celeb birthdays during the Doc Block, but who knows, maybe things will line up better if I skip a day and proceed from here. As a result, today I'm sending out a big Birthday SHOUT-out to Kim Dickens, born June 18, 1965. Let's see, who else has birthdays in June and July? It would be great if some of my documentary subjects did - and it's just 3 days until Doc Block.
THE PLOT: Modernization of Charles Dickens' classic story finds the hapless Finn as a painter in New York City pursuing his unrequited childhood love.
AFTER: Clearly, this film was made shortly after the success of the 1996 version of "Romeo + Juliet" with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. You can see that, right? One film that takes a classic novel and "modernizes" it is a hit, then another one gets fast-tracked and before you know it, you've got a hot trend on your hands. What other classic novels or plays got re-vamped in the late 1990's? What a deal, the story's already written, we don't have to pay for like five screenwriters and a sixth one to punch it up.
Sure, I can see why some parts of Dickens' novel needed to be changed - we can no longer identify with an orphan from the streets of London during the Industrial Revolution, but an orphan from the Gulf Coast who works on a fishing boat? OK, maybe. Now part of me wants to stop and go back to the original novel, just to see what made the grade in 1998 and what didn't. Hold on...let me go do that.
OK, so they changed Pip's name to "Finn", and Miss Havisham's name to "Ms. Dinsmoor", but they kept Estella's name intact. (Why we didn't see a rash of Millennial kids named "Estella", I'm not sure...). And in the novel Pip lived with a blacksmith, not a fishing boat captain, but that's OK. And then when he goes to London, Pip gets an apprenticeship with a lawyer, but here in the 1998 film he becomes a NYC downtown artist. The rest kind of proceeds similarly in both versions, though this movie seems to have also really trimmed away the extraneous characters (Magwitch, Molly, Compeyson...)
Young Finn encounters a convict in the Gulf Coast marshes, and it's De Niro in full Travis Bickle mode. The convict instructs him to bring him some bolt cutters and food the next morning, and Finn complies, because, well, this guy now knows his name and where he lives, and will probably kill his family if he doesn't. Keep this incident in mind, because it could be important later. Finn tries to take the convict to Mexico in his rowboat but a police boat gets in the way - the convict disappears into the Gulf and Finn goes back to his life, later he sees on the TV news that the convict, Arthur Lustig, was captured and returned to death row.
Young Finn here gets an opportunity to visit the aged Ms. Dinsmoor, and play in the ruins of her giant house with Estella, who kisses him when they drink from a fountain, and then Ms. Dinsmoor encourages him to draw Estella's portrait, since he can't dance or sing to entertain her. What Finn doesn't know is that Ms. Dinsmoor is training Estella to win over men's hearts, as a method of getting ahead in the world. (It was a different time...). She even warns Finn that Estella will break his heart, but also she was aware that he was probably not going to heed the warning, because really, the only way to learn about the down side of romance is to go through it. Time passes and Finn grows older, but instead of sealing the deal with Estella or going on an actual date, she goes off to boarding school, and Finn realizes that he missed his window.
So Finn goes to work on the fishing boat, his sister has gone AWOL and he gets a visit from a NYC lawyer, telling him that a gallery owner in New York is interested in his art, and a mysterious benefactor is going to pay for his plane tickets and expenses to go to the Big Apple. Since he finds out that Estella lives there, naturally Finn assumes that Ms. Dinsmoor is his patron, and wants him to go pursue Estella, but we know what happens when you "assume", don't we? Still, he takes the opportunity to leave the fishing business and make it happen in NYC, the only trouble becomes, what to paint? Estella solves this problem by coming to his apartment and posing for him, which is problematic because she's dating someone and on the cusp of being engaged. So yeah, everything seems to be coming together for Finn, except things are more complicated than ever.
Estella does NOT show up for Finn's big gallery opening, but his uncle Joe does, and completely embarrasses him in front of the cultural elite in the art world. Ms. Dinsmoor shows up, apparently she's got houses in both Manhattan and Louisiana, and she drops the bomb that she's in town for Estella's wedding. Once again, Estella was only toying with Finn, she only posed for him to make her boyfriend jealous, and thus caused him to propose.
Then Finn gets a visit at his downtown loft from an older man, who needs to use his phone. But it's the convict from the start of the story, Lustig escaped from prison again, years ago, and has been in hiding ever since. But, he's done all right for himself, and reveals himself as Finn's mysterious benefactor, as Finn was the only person who ever did a kind favor for him, so any extra money he ever made went to fostering Finn's art career, and probably paying for that loft. Lustig is headed for Paris to start a new life there, and Finn takes him to the subway station, which will take him to the airport. But there in the Chambers St. "A" station, Lustig sees some old friends from the neighborhood, and it doesn't end well.
NITPICK POINT: Lustig and Finn get on a G train at Chambers St. to get away from these mobsters who have a beef with Lustig. Only the G train doesn't stop there, it's really the ONE subway line that doesn't come into Manhattan at all, it just goes between Brooklyn and Queens. But someone getting stabbed on the G train? Well, that tracks, honestly. But then the problem is that after they get away on the G train, one of the mobsters somehow catches up with the G train - how? By taking another train on the same line? That's impossible, because another G train couldn't possibly catch up with the G train they were on. Did he somehow jump on the back of the train after the doors had closed? This guy just didn't look that athletic, sorry.
Look, I could understand it if they were on an L train. There are so many problems with the L train, between brakes being activated, sick passengers who need medical attention, and the line being completely shut down for random service upgrades, that if you needed to catch somebody on an L train that just left, you could take the A train to Broadway Junction the long way, catch another L train going in the other direction, and catch up that way, because the train they got on probably would break down somewhere right after Lorimer St.. For that matter, you could get on another train that went the long way around the surface of the entire planet and probably catch up with that L train that just left. Seriously, I used my subway app to sign up for alerts every time there's trouble with the L and it's constant, all day every day.
Anyway, if you need help writing that book report for English class, this updated version of Dickens' story probably isn't going to be much help. In the book Ms. Havisham dies when her wedding dress catches fire, but here Ms. Dinsmoor just kind of gets dementia and fades away. Finn goes to Paris but returns to visit his uncle Joe, and then encounters Estella again, back in Ms. Dinsmoor's garden. Estella is divorced or something, she has a daughter, but perhaps she's damaged enough now to finally be open to a relationship with Finn, they're both older and wiser and have made a few mistakes to learn from, and sure, that's where a lot of people might find themselves this day, so finally at the end there's something of a payoff for modernizing this whole affair.
It kind of feels like somebody put this big cast together and then didn't know what to do with everyone, though. Or they put out a big casting call and then just threw in whoever was available that day they were shooting the big gallery opening. I mean, if you're going to cast Lance Reddick, you should really have something for Lance Reddick TO DO, not just be a guy at a party who might want to buy some art some day. Just saying.
Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "The Northman"), Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "Moonlight and Valentino"), Chris Cooper (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Hank Azaria (last seen in "Eulogy"), Anne Bancroft (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Josh Mostel (last seen in "State of Play"), Kim Dickens (last seen in "Lizzie"), Nell Campbell (last seen in "The Killing Fields"), Gabriel Mann (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), Stephen Spinella (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Jeremy James Kissner, Raquel Beaudene (last seen in "Boys and Girls"), Marla Sucharetza (last seen in "One for the Money"), Isabelle Anderson, Peter Jacobson (last seen in "Better Living Through Chemistry"), Drena De Niro (last seen in "City by the Sea"), Lance Reddick (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), Craig Braun (last seen in "Flawless"), Kim Snyder, Gerry Bamman (last seen in "Superstar"), Dorin Seymour, Marc Macaulay (last seen in "Cleaner"), Ana Susana Gerardino, Dale Resteghini.
RATING: 5 out of 10 sold paintings
No comments:
Post a Comment