pt at large

The Savages

This satisfying ensemble of Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco shows the strain, the love, the secrets between brother and sister as they take responsibility to care for their nursing-home-bound father (Bosco). This is as close to an ‘art house’ movie that Hollywood can get.

The film subtly shows the siblings cope with shreds of their shared past as they do their best to manage their own mid-life crises while dealing with their dying father. When you’re not wincing, you’re chuckling at the dry humor in exchanges between brother and sister.

Vignettes that make up the movie ring true scene after scene. You can sense the institutional smell of the nursing home, the scent of the siblings' perspiration in their rumpled clothes, and the grudging bond of shared sorrow and love that lie beneath their conflicting ideas about their father's care, their own failing professional aspirations and personal relationships.

The simple story isn’t gussied up with pretty details. The way the three dress, the interiors of the siblings' living spaces, and their shaky relationships with the opposite sex fit together like pieces of a miniature jigsaw puzzle.

The sibling’s sharp edged memories of their childhood could easily drive a wedge between them. They’re making the peace with each other that they could never achieve with their father.

The acting is brilliant, funny, sad, and uplifting. The only place Hollywood gets in the way is the tidy resolution in the last few minutes. Luckily, the previous 110 minutes of honest filmmaking leave a more lasting impact.

Tony Soprano and Harold Pinter: No Man’s Land

Sunday, June 10, 2007 - a day to embrace uncertainty. The least of my worries, as I await the matinee of "No Man’s Land" at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA, is that I won't grasp the meaning of Harold Pinter’s play. 

Pinter is the heavyweight champion playwright of pauses, loose context, and ambiguity. I realize I’m in over my head going in. If everyone’s candid, I’m not alone with this line of thought. One of the only things  generally agreed upon is that age and mortality are what’s on Pinter’s mind in "No Man’s Land". How appropriate for today.

I’m not worried about being boxed out by Harold Pinter this afternoon. No. My main concern is what’s going to happen to Tony Soprano tonight. I know that I’m not alone here, either. The average viewer-ship of every “The Sopranos” HBO episode is between 10 and 12 million people. Tonight is the last episode - ever.

I’m not worried that I’ll feel intellectually inadequate here. I’m taking comfort that I know ahead of time that Pinter leaves holes in the plot big enough to drive one of Tony’s waste management trucks through. I can embrace ambiguity on the stage. The uncertainty about Tony's fate is what gnaws at me.

Tonight, Tony Soprano is in No Man’s Land. Death looms. His inner circle, goombahs like grim-faced Silvio and man-child Bobby, has been whacked. Tony is in hiding. He's never seemed so vulnerable.

Tony can’t seem to escape his DNA. For every step forward toward a moral life, he’s made several backward. The alpha dog in him won't die - but Tony might tonight.

I know why I care about some of Pinter’s characters. Why do I care about Tony? He's an emotionally stunted bully. So why do I keep rooting for him to show me that he’s “basically a good guy,” as he’s told his therapist Dr Melfi? I want to believe in redemption for Tony - and by extension - for me. Tonight I get the answer.

As I write this note to myself just before Pinter’s play begins at 2 pm, I can hear the stonecutters tool boring into polished stone. I can see a slab of granite resting atop the fresh soil over Tony’s cold, dead body. As one of Pinter’s characters will say in the play, “There’s a place in the soul where no human being can trespass.”

What has Tony’s self-insulation into No Man’s Land cost him? What does it cost any of us? Trust or trespass? Love or rejection? Life or death? Tony finds out tonight. The rest of us have to wait.

Friends with money

"Friends with money", is a layered and ambiguous slice-of-life film about friends and couples, and the ties that bind them or knot them together like hostages.
The scenes of the three couples and one friend together have the feel of spontaneous ensemble acting. Worth seeing if you like films that arent neatly packaged with tidy beginnings and endings. Not recommended as a first date movie.