Sufficiently open-ended to allow for an addition to the now completed Ludlum/Bourne trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum becomes onscreen a propulsive thriller in which “Jason Bourne,” a super-trained amnesiac C.I.A. assassin, continues trying to discover who he really is while dodging assassination attempts, and protecting others, from the organization, which has sent him out into the cold to cover its tracks. Like its predecessor, The Bourne Supremacy (2004), Ultimatum benefits from Paul Greengrass’s accomplished direction.
Here, Greengrass can claim two important collaborators. One is his cutter, Christopher Rouse. I wrote once that Jean Rouch’s Jaguar (1955, 1967) holds the record for the number of shots per length of any film; The Bourne Ultimatum possibly shatters that record. This is a brilliant filmmaking strategy on Greengrass’s part, for the bits and pieces that his film comprises are formally correlative to Bourne’s shattered consciousness and the puzzle of identity he is doggedly piecing together. With its flashes of incoherent memory besides, the form of the film suits the mental processes by which the protagonist pursues self-discovery, hoping to reclaim what may be missing from all the loose available puzzle pieces: his soul. Editor Rouse has nimbly followed Greengrass’s formal strategy.
Greengrass’s other important collaborator is his star, Matt Damon, whose unfinished maturity and hints of soulfulness along the fast way perfectly fit the bedeviled outcast that he plays.
Albert Finney based his monster on the evil Noah Cross that John Huston played in Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974). This is also Finney’s heartfelt hommage to Huston, who drew from Finney his greatest performance (Under the Volcano, 1984). But it distracts. Every time Finney speaks, we think, “He’s impersonating Huston.”
Around the edges the film roasts the secretive Bush/Cheney administration with its appetite for having people tortured and killed.
B(U)Y THE BOOK
MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.
THE SKY’S THE LIMIT (Edward H. Griffith, 1943)
January 17, 2008More like a sketch than a film, but a full and delightful one, The Sky’s the Limit plays with its wartime audience in an interesting way.
Fred Astaire plays on-leave Air Force pilot Fred Atwell, who skips out on war bond/propaganda tour, to avoid publicity that will cast him as hero, and incognito, as cowboy Fred Burton, promptly falls in love with a photographer who tries to enlist his services in the war effort. Her name is Joan Manion, and like Astaire she is played by an actress, Joan Leslie, whose first name is the first name of her character. Moreover, both stars refer to recent co-stars: Fred, to Rita Hayworth; Joan, to Jimmy Cagney. Atwell, who wanted to avoid flashing cameras, can’t keep away from Manion’s camera because he doesn’t want to keep away from her. He begs her to photograph him. “Couldn’t I be the fellow who never gets his name mentioned? The one they call ‘a friend?’” he asks her. “You know, Ginger Rogers ‘and friend.’”
It turns out that this isn’t Crosby-Hope-type “Road”-picture inside-joking. It’s more purposeful than that, for it helps prepare the audience for a sweepingly moving finale. As himself, Atwell is at the air field about to take off, and who should be photographing him but Joan, who of course now knows the truth about Fred, that he isn’t a slacker but a patriotic warrior. They kiss, and as he takes off, in tearful closeup, Joan mouths a prayer whose words we do not hear. The collapse of the barrier between Astaire and Leslie and their roles thus expands to collapse the barrier between these characters and the audience, who fill in the prayer for their own loved ones overseas. How I love popular commercial cinema! It can do things that nothing else can.
Astaire is fine and Leslie, normally too wholesome for my taste, sparkles in a more sophisticated role than she usually plays. Astaire, who choreographed, gives Leslie a sprightly, charming dance with him that doesn’t strain her limited ability, and he gives himself a spectacular number on top of a bar smashing pyramids of drink glasses with his shoes. The rage it expresses is all out of proportion for the light romantic comedy of masked identity that props up the slight plot. Rather, it suits the horror and viciousness of war, as well as the nonsense of official “heroism” from which Atwell fled in the first place.
The next year, Preston Sturges went even further in this vein in his sardonic satire Hail the Conquering Hero.
B(U)Y THE BOOK
MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=16
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=19
Posted in Informal Capsule Film Comments | Leave a Comment »