LFF 2011: Ides of March, Carnage, and Bernie

The Ides of March
Top quality, if a little cold, political drama from George Clooney, this time directing while taking a key supporting role.

As the title suggests, there are strong Shakespearean overtones in the film’s story of Ryan Gosling’s Stephen Myers, the deputy campaign manager for Clooney’s Democrat would-be presidential candidate: he is the idealist in the cesspool of political campaigning – does he fight clean and face failure, or do the means justify the ends? Dirty or not, does he even have the guts and the nous for the fight? Can he square his morality with his own ambition?

Gosling is in award-winning form, visibly ageing through the film, becoming wiser with each slap in the face as he confronts his direct boss Philip Seymour Hoffman, his rival Paul Giamatti, his lover Evan Rachel Wood, and his newspaper contact Marisa Tomei. This supporting cast is as brilliant as ever.

The technical credits are off the chart too: the great score from Alexandre ‘King’s Speech’ Desplat, and lovely cinematography from Phedon Papamichael (who shot The Descendants) should meet with awards recognition too.

Overall the film has a very 70s, post-Watergate feel, its depth of character study, realism and cool detachment being reminiscent of Lumet or Pakula. Nevertheless, the film is nothing less than timely and current, and yet another feather in Clooney’s bulging cap.
Score: 8/10

Carnage
I never thought I would laugh intentionally at a Roman Polanski film, but Carnage is the film that has made the improbable real.
Laceratingly funny, Carnage’s raison d’etre is the outstanding performances from three-quarters of its four-strong cast that positively demand awards recognition.

John C Reilly and Jodie Foster invite Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet round to discuss a playground altercation between the two couples’ boys. The tension between the two couples is obvious from the start, but swiftly the film lays bear the internal rivalries within each marriage and highlights the eternal battle of the sexes.

While the four characters have been created to generate maximum friction, they are fully developed across the film’s short running time (just 80 minutes), ensuring their behaviour (for the most part) is utterly believable.

Jodie Foster rants and raves with aplomb, Reilly deftly plays out his passive/aggressive role, while Waltz imbues his lawyer with an intelligent yet childish streak of evil. The only false note is la Winslet: she’s one of my favourite actresses, but I’m never convinced by her American accent, plus seeing her, always a strong female lead, as the unequal half in her marriage is jarring. Having said that, Winslet generates probably the film’s biggest gut-wrenching laugh…

As the four squabble and fight, the insults and insights become sharper, funnier and more painful, the hypocrisies of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois well and truly skewered. As the verbal punches fly faster and with increasing intensity, it becomes like a tagteam boxing match.

However, the script, adapted from a play, never truly escapes its origins and nor does it rise to Mamet-esque or LaBute-esque levels of black comedy – but then again not much does!
Score: 7.5/10

Bernie
This is the latest, slightly disappointing curio from director Richard Linklater, working with his School of Rock cohort Jack Black. It’s based on the true story of a funeral director, unanimously loved in his adopted Texas town of Carthage, who murders the wealthy humourless widow (Shirely MacLaine) whom he has befriended.

The film does successfully combine biopic elements with documentary-style talking heads, mixing actors and real people. However, Black is front and centre – and his schtick here doesn’t quite work – while MacLaine replays a role she has played too many times before.

On the bright side, Matthew McConaughey reveals a previously hidden talent for character comedy as the DA out to take Black’s Bernie down – and on the evidence presented here should be fighting for Paul Giamatti- and Sam Rockwell-type roles rather than action-adventure and romcom leads.

But the stand-out character in this film is not an actor, it’s one of the locals, who dispatches his wisdom and opinions with perfect comic timing.
Score: 6.5 /10