• _The Immigrant_

    From septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jan 17 15:08:06 2016
    James Gray's _The Immigrant_ certainly seems topical in a time when
    refugees constitute the greatest crisis all over the world. In the
    DVD commentary he discusses how personal the screenplay is to him,
    inspired as it is by his immigrant grandparents' experience. The
    film, unfortunately, shares the points-of-view of only one single
    migrant (Marion Cotillard's Ewa) and her benefactor/pimp (Joaquin
    Phoenix's Bruno). It is 1921 and the Polish Ewa and her sister
    are marooned on Ellis Island. Bruno gets her out, but he turns out
    to be more duplicitous and manipulative than he first appears.

    It is a given that American studio films are mostly about power.
    Hustlers, gangster bosses, cops, special force soldiers,
    entrepreneurs, magicians -- mostly men -- scheming and bull-dozing
    their way to what they want. Unfortunately, American indies are
    now also excessively fascinated with the powerful rather than
    the powerless, like the most immigrants are. The screenplay of
    this film is really confused. If it had focused on Ewa it might
    have been powerful and moving, but it makes Bruno the more complex
    character, and his redemption becomes the big reveal and climax
    of the film. It is like making Kevin Kline the central character
    in _Sophie's Choice_ and having him usurp Meryl Streep. The
    whole thing is so wrong-headed.

    It doesn't help that Phoenix is stiff and his character is
    thoroughly repellent. The fact that co-writer and director Gray
    thinks so highly of this character's dramatic potential is
    symptomatic of U.S. cinema. Marion Cotillard is certainly an
    accomplished actress, but her work, here and elsewhere, seems
    so studied and distant. At times she seems positively outside
    her own body, watching herself perform, and she does not have
    that extra gear that can set a scene on edge. She is an
    exception among French actresses, who are generally so
    spontaneous. I can't say I have ever seen a truly great
    Cotillard performance (have to catch up with the Dardennes
    film and _Macbeth_ though); even her Oscar-winning work
    as Edith Piaf I find overrated. The sister character in
    the film is hardly there at all, nor is life on Ellis Island.
    Focusing on the immigrants in the plural would have made
    much better films (like _The Golden Door_, with Charlotte
    Gainsbourg, and _L'America_ too).

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