Film review of Vox Lux

(This film review of “Vox Lux” appeared in the Australian Jewish News on 21 February 2019.)

Directed and written by Brady Corbet; starring Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Stacy Martin, Jennifer Ehle and Raffey Cassidy, with narration by Willem Dafoe

*****

“Vox Lux” is a new drama featuring everyone’s favourite Israeli-American actress, Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”, “A Tale of Love and Darkness”, “Jackie”), as Celeste Montgomery, a young woman who survives a violent tragedy with her sister (French actress Stacy Martin, star of “Nymphomaniac”) and turns it into a hit song that launches their singing careers.

Portman arrives in the film half-way through; her younger self (Raffey Cassidy) is the one (careful: plot spoilers ahead) who faces the darkened eyes of a Columbine-style school shooter in her Staten Island high school, offering to be a hostage if he lets everyone go. It doesn’t work: Celeste is shot anyway, but she survives, following which she attends months of physical therapy.

With the help of her younger sister, Celeste chances on music as a form of therapy, and ends up writing a hit song about her experience, coached by a gruff manager (Jude Law) and guided by a music publicist (Jennifer Ehle). Fast forward 15 years. Celeste, now 31, is a superstar singer, a drug and alcohol abuser, and an imperious, self-centred and powerful presence, part Lady Gaga, part Madonna. She also has a teenage daughter (with no partner on the scene) named Albertine, played by Raffey Cassidy (who is also the younger Celeste). A neat trick.

“Vox Lux” is that kind of movie, striving to keep the audience off-balance. Despite the film’s nasty subject matter, it is presented with a strong ironical (and occasionally humorous) tone, partly due to a calm “voice from on high” narration by an unmistakeable Willem Dafoe. There’s something else, possibly the sound design or an at times menacing musical score by iconic composer Scott Walker (The Walker Brothers). Or perhaps it’s the edginess that most characters show on screen, that makes you think something terrible is always about to happen. Some pretty bad things take place – this is a physically and emotionally violent film, truly earning its MA15+ rating – although events never feel quite as emotionally devastating as foreshadowed. The director, Brady Corbet, may be playing with us here, distancing us from the emotions of his lead character. Or not. The result is disconcerting, intentionally so. This is clever film-making, torn from tomorrow’s news. It may not be easy to watch, but the result commands our attention.

Portman’s performance is enthralling, a haunting darker sister to Lady Gaga in “A Star is Born”. Like Lady Gaga, she sings her own songs. What she loses in melody, she makes up in aggressiveness.

Despite strong early Oscar buzz, Portman was shut out of both Oscars and Golden Globe nominations. According to The Guardian, last year – 2018 – was the worst on record for gun violence in American schools, with 94, beating the previous record (set in 2006) of 59. Are the film’s themes, so contemporary in the era of Sandy Hook and Parkland, just too strong for major awards?

The final half of the film is a count down to a major concert by Celeste, and it is shattered by a distant tragedy with uncomfortable resonance to Celeste’s own brand. Celebrity and terrorism are inextricably linked in America, “Vox Lux” seems to be telling us.

Film review of 7 Days in Entebbe

(This film review of “7 Days in Entebbe”, also called “Entebbe”, appeared in the Australian Jewish News on August 30, 2018.)

Directed by José Padilha; written by Gregory Burke; starring Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl, Eddie Marsan, Ben Schnetzer, Lior Ashkenazi and Denis Ménochet

The new film “Entebbe” (also entitled “7 Days in Entebbe”) – about the famed Israeli rescue of 248 hostages from a hijacked Air France airplane in Uganda in 1976 – released in Australia this week on DVD, Blu-Ray and selected streaming services. Four hijackers – two German and two Palestinian – took control of the plane after leaving Athens and demanded it refuel in Libya and fly to Uganda. There, with the support of Ugandan President Idi Amin, they attempted to negotiate the passengers for release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Over the course of a week the Israelis organised a dramatic rescue, projecting their military power by sending 100 commandos an unprecedented 4,000 kilometres, deep into Africa. All but four passengers and one Israeli solder – Yonatan Netanyahu, older brother of current Prime Minister Bibi – survived the experience. For many, it was the most daring special forces rescue in history, a high point in Israeli international authority.

Don’t let the absence of a cinema release fool you: this is a high-production “ticking clock” action thriller directed by Brazilian José Padilha (“Robocop”), with a stellar international cast. One of the pleasures of this new version of the story is the portrayal of historic figures by contemporary actors, notably Israelis Lior Ashkenazi as (then Prime Minister) Yitzhak Rabin, Mark Ivanir as IDF Chief-of-Staff Motta Gur, Yifach Klein as Ehud Barak; British character actor Eddie Marsan as Shimon Peres; French actor Denis Ménochet (who played a  farmer that hid Jews in “Inglourious Bastards”) as the plane’s heroic flight engineer; and British Nigerian actor Nonso Anozie as Idi Amin. German actor Daniel Bruhl and British actress Rosamund Pike headline the cast, playing the German hijackers; the Palestinian hijackers remain less distinct personalities in Padilha’s telling.

It’s a “Euro-pudding” cast, with the film shot in Malta. Characters mostly speak English, with the occasional foray into German, Arabic, French or Hebrew. The result is a bit disconcerting as it’s not always clear what national background the characters are from.

If you are looking for language verisimilitude, this is not the film. Instead return to the Menachem Golan’s 1977 Israeli-made, Oscar-nominated “Operation Thunderbolt”, in which Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yigal Allon all played themselves.

What director Padilha does bring is a carefully plotted “actioner”, complete with internal arguments among Israeli politicians, how the IDF prepared for the assault on a mock-up of Entebbe Airport, and the rescue itself. There’s not quite enough tension (surely we all know how the story ends), but Padilha adds a new twist by exploring the German hijackers’ backgrounds and personalities, a theme he first utilised in his controversial Brazilian documentary “Bus 174”.

Oddly, the film opens with a rehearsal of the Israeli Batsheva Dance company practicing a rousing Hebrew version of Passover song “Achad Mi Yodea” (“Who Knows One”), also known as “the chair dance”, choreographed by company’s famed director Ohad Naharin. This intercutting of the dance sequence – it appears throughout the film, and returns as a full performance during the final scene during the airport raid at the film’s climax – is affecting and powerful, although its inclusion in the film is difficult to understand. One of the Batsheva performers is the girlfriend of one of the film’s characters, but what does the dance signify?

Director Jose Padilha explains that that he loves Israeli culture and admires the Israeli capability for self-criticism. The dance “is an amazing metaphor. The only way there’s going to be a solution [to the Palestinian conflict], the only way we are going to break this cycle of fear, is if somehow people strip themselves of their orthodox way of thinking.” Maybe, but I’m still scratching my head.

No matter. The story is too good to leave alone and seeing Batsheva on screen is thrilling. The final frames predictably – but satisfyingly – summarise the outcomes of the events.  Many viewers are likely to feel a renewed awe in the capability of Israeli military derring-do, a reminder of the intractability of the conflict and how Israelis were – indeed still are – capable of extraordinary feats of imagination and risk-taking.

(image above: the theatrical poster for US release in March 2018)

Film review of Patriot’s Day: A love valentine to Boston

(This film review of “Patriot’s Day” appeared in the Australian Jewish News on 9 February 2017.)

Directed by Peter Berg; written by Peter Berg, Matt Cook and Joshua Zetumer, based on the book “Boston Strong”; starring Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman and J. K. Simmons.

*****

“Patriot’s Day” is one of the most powerful, sensitive and finely produced films about domestic terrorism.  Few films feel torn from today’s news pages; this is one of them.

“Patriot’s Day” dramatises the events leading up to and immediately after the Boston Marathon bombings, which took place on 15 April 2013.  This was also the Patriot’s Day public holiday that commemorates the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord, and which has been the date of the Boston Marathon since 1897 – a genuine Boston tradition in a town where tradition means something.  The fact that this film was produced and released less than four years after the actual events means that it deals with matters still raw in the American consciousness.  Just last week, President Donald Trump accused Australia of trying to send the US “the next Boston bombers” as part of the disputed refugee deal.

Two radicalised Muslim Chechen-American brothers – Tamerian and Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev, who had claimed asylum and later became US citizens – planned and executed one of the most destructive modern terrorist events in the USA, with three people killed and 264 injured.  Once their identities became public, they attempted to flee.  Originally aiming for New York City to carry out more attacks, they killed an MIT campus policeman, hijacked a car and conducted a massive shoot-out with local police on the streets of suburban Watertown, where older brother Tamerian was killed.  Jahar was able to flee and hid in a boat, where he was captured a day later.

The film follows these facts closely, and presents them in an “up close and personal” way.  Mark Wahlberg plays Boston Police Department Sergeant Tommy Saunders, the film’s only major character who is a not real person (a “composite”), and who centres the film.  It’s a passionate and gutsy performance (Wahlberg is Boston-born and a co-producer), although one passed over in the Oscar nominations.  Almost all of the other characters are real people with their actual names:  Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (played by John Goodman), Watertown police chief Jeffrey Pugliese (J.K. Simmons), FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Police Superintendent William Evans.  All are convincing, but none more so or as chilling than Georgian-born Themo Melikidze playing older brother Tamerian Tsarnaev and Alex Wolff (whose father is Jewish) as the younger brother Jahar.

“Patriot’s Day” unspools in sequence, with the opening scenes introducing a large number of characters. The particular hook is that the film introduces a number of “unknowns”:  ordinary people getting ready for their day.  We sense – rightly as it turns out – that they all have a place in the story, and in history.

“Patriot’s Day” is not for the squeamish; don’t let the “M” rating fool you – it’s strong, with vivid images of the bombing injuries and the aftermath.  The film’s strengths come from its ability to portray recent history in a straightforward and clear-headed way, weaving in a large cast of “named” characters without confusing the viewer, making sense of what was in effect a massive police procedural and showing both heroism and despair.  “Patriot’s Day” is also sentimental, deservedly so, and open in its love for Boston and the city’s residents, who are portrayed with unusual delicacy, sensitivity and care..  A scene with a wordless policeman who guards the sheet-covered body of one of the victims brought wells of tears to my eyes.  The questioning of Tamerian Tsarnaev’s wife by a nameless scarf-clad female interrogator is a masterful scene of understatement, with a direct message for today’s anti-terrorist efforts.

(Image above:  Mark Wahlberg – a Boston native – in “Patriot’s Day”)

Cyberterrorism – the new digital scourge

Suddenly it’s everywhere.

Cyberterrorism, it’s the new digital scourge.

Is it just an accident that in the last day I, (a) finished an article in The New Yorker (of May 20, 2013) by John Seabrook entitled “Network Insecurity: Are we losing the battle against cyber crime?”, and (b) listened to a lecture on the Australian ABC Radio National’s “Big Ideas” program, entitled “Cyber attacks: How war and economics are being transformed by computerisation”, given by Scott Borg.

Seabrook reports (in part) on an interview with Eric Grosse, a Google software engineer who heads up that company’s security team. Grosse’s comments on passwords:

He hopes to get rid of passwords, or at least reduce their importance in the “line of defense”. In the short term, however, the answer is more of them and not less, including the “two step verification” (including a mobile phone text message) that is becoming popular with Australian banks when making transfers to someone else’s account.

“The biggest problem is people can’t be expected to remember two hundred passwords. I mean, I have two hundred passwords, and they’re all different and they’re all strong.”

“How do you remember them?”

“I have to write them down.”

“But then that piece of paper could be stolen.”

“Yeah, but if your adversary is somebody on the other side of the ocean he can’t get the piece of paper you have in a safe at home. If you’re trying to guard against your roommate, then you need a new roommate.”

Wise words, those.

And Scott Borg? He is the Director and Chief Economist of the non-profit (501c3) U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit (US-CCU). His lecture, downloadable (at least for a few weeks) reviews the economic impacts of cyberterrorism, which he – frighteningly describes as having greater potential impacts than a nuclear bomb. He describes in great detail the implications of what would happen if all of the electrical power plants in a country (say, Australia) were to be remotely disabled.

Don’t believe me; listen to the lecture to find out.