July 5–12, 2001

movies

Screen Picks

by Sam Adams

The Apartment

($19.98 DVD)

It’s been said more than a few times in the last week that Jack Lemmon was one of the most prodigiously talented actors of his generation. Sometimes, the chattering classes get it right. A sort of anti-Brando, Lemmon projected self-effacing vulnerability; in Some Like It Hot, he was out-glammed not only by Marilyn Monroe but by Tony Curtis as well. Where actors before him had played the everymans as stoic, plain but noble, Lemmon’s was just plain; he had to scrounge for nobility any way he could. C.C. Baxter, The Apartment’s nebbishy accountant, is almost too much of a regular Joe; his spineless toadying is too real to be funny. Though Billy Wilder’s dark 1960 comedy — newly issued to DVD in a fabulous transfer — has its proponents, I’ve always found it wobbly in tone, unlike Wilder masterpieces like Some Like It Hot and Sunset Blvd., or even superior genre films like Double Indemnity. At times, especially in the dialogue, it approaches a kind of satirical stylization, but the settings are too naturalistic for its tale of bureaucratic inhumanity to take hold. Still, at its center are a handful of magnificent performances, especially Shirley MacLaine’s as a lovelorn elevator-operator whose affair with a corporate higher-up proves both her (near-)ruin and her salvation. In an odd way, though Lemmon’s is the lead role, he ends up playing second fiddle — to MacLaine, to evil bosses Fred MacMurray and Ray Walston, even to Jack Kruschen’s nosy next-door doctor. As an actor, Lemmon’s probably better commemorated with Some Like It Hot or even Glengarry Glen Ross, but as a man who never put vanity ahead of artistry, The Apartment makes a fitting epitaph.

Code Inconnu

(Fri., July 6, 9 p.m.; Mon., July 9, 3 p.m.; Tue., July 10, 3:30 p.m.; Sat., July 14, 7 p.m., Sundance Channel)

Directed by Austrian Michael Haneke, whose La Pianiste took the Jury Prize at Cannes this year (and whose Funny Games stirred up controversy a few years back), last year’s Code Inconnu somehow managed to avoid U.S. theatrical distribution entirely, and so makes its premiere on Sundance Channel. The complete French title translates as "Code Unknown: An incomplete account of several stories," and so it is; progressing mainly through single shots separated by blackouts, the film follows several characters through the streets of Paris, from Juliette Binoche’s struggling actress to Ona Lu Yenke’s belligerently self-righteous student. The film’s long-take structure — the only visible cuts are in a scene from the film Binoche is in the process of shooting — predictably saps some dramatic velocity, but the technique effectively conveys the sense of disconnection and anomie central to Haneke’s portrait of souls adrift in the modern world. (Once or twice, we jump in and out of a scene in the middle of a line, just to increase the sense of dislocation.) Luckily, Haneke’s picked actors you want to watch for long takes; the mere process of walking up and down a street is transformed through their actions and our watching them. Since distribution is inherently a commercial decision, it’s dicey to say a given film "deserves" it or not. Just be thankful you get to watch it at all.

Catch-22

($29.99 DVD)

Mike Nichols’ reputation as a major director is a puzzling one: Apart from The Graduate, his films are flawed at best, a good deal of them simply intolerable. Catch-22 is a fascinating botch, but a botch all the same. Adapting Joseph Heller’s surreally satirical novel, Nichols and veteran cinematographer John Watkin (who began his career with Richard Lester) opt for a style composed of elaborate master shots, and a hyper-theatrical acting style whose grating intensity the camerawork throws into stark relief. The commentary, by Nichols and Catch admirer Steven Soderbergh, is by far the most interesting part of the disc, with Nichols revealing how Watkins’ insistence on perfect natural light sometimes meant the production could only shoot for two hours a day — or, alternatively, certain scenes would be shot and reshot at the same time each day until Watkin was satisfied. Given that Soderbergh is by far the more interesting director, what’s most noteworthy is the interest he shows in the arc of Nichols’ career — how he began with elaborately composed visuals, suffered a nervous breakdown and reemerged as a far more naturalistic and loose-limbed director. (Not that Wolf is any better than Catch.) It sounds an awful lot like the trajectory of Soderbergh’s art — only his has a happier conclusion.

You Can Count On Me

($29.99 DVD)

After two Oscar nominations and a scattering of top-10 lists, You Can Count on Me may not qualify for "sleeper" status any longer, but all the same, it’s likely more people heard about than actually saw it. Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, the playwright behind This is our Youth and Lobby Hero, the film, an intense, wonderfully acted character drama, loses nothing on the small screen. The secret of Lonergan’s film isn’t just the care with which he limns the relationship between Laura Linney’s control-freak sister and her perpetual fuck-up brother (Mark Ruffalo). It’s his deep, almost unspoken understanding of how lives marked by tragedy play out long after the overt wounds have healed. Normally, commentaries by inexperience directors aren’t particularly interesting, but Lonergan’s comments shed light on both the filmmaking process — including the fact that Linney and Ruffalo took turns directing the scenes in which Lonergan appears — and the profound insight that went into the characters’ creation.

The Fugitive

($24.98 DVD)

So why are you watching this again? Well, for one thing, up until last summer’s What Lies Beneath, it was Harrison Ford’s only decent movie of the last decade. And because the new Special Edition tarts the film up with commentary from director Andrew Davis and an extremely taciturn Tommy Lee Jones. Or just because good action movies are as rare as cool days in August. Davis’ meat-and-potatoes direction isn’t always inspiring, but there’s something to be said for a hearty home-cooked meal.