Husband and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992)Woody Allen is married to Mia Farrow. Judy Davis is married to Sydney Pollack. They're all best friends. Heading out to dinner one night, Davis and Pollack casually announce that they're separating. Allen and Farrow are all, "Whaa?" Then everyone takes a long, hard look at themselves. The end.
Husbands and Wives does not open well. For one thing, the arc of the film is disappointingly obvious from the start (
Pollack and Davis end up back together; Allen and Farrow drift apart). Worse than that, the film is so anxious to demonstrate that it's going for a documentary style that it completely oversells the idea. Carlo Di Palma's jittery camera careens about so amateurishly in the first scene as to be absurd. There's zero realism to the photorealism, and it's really off-putting.
The cinematography settles down as the film progresses, but the nonfiction trappings rarely rise above the level of a half-baked conceit. The film does use one aspect of the style to real advantage, though: The one-on-one interviews with the characters are generally excellent. Allen writes a very good monologue, and the actors here make the most of these scenes. I especially enjoyed Benno Schmidt's seemingly incongruous appearances as the ex-husband of Farrow's character. Very nice contrast, there.
I glanced at a few reviews that lumped the film's editing together negatively with the film's camerawork. I totally disagree with that. Susan Morse's cutting was a huge asset here, with most every jump-cut being well-timed and good for either a smile or a key dramatic emphasis. The transitions in and out of the interviews are great, and the film flows nicely overall, despite a couple fat scenes here and there.
On the whole, though, the film was just so-so for me. Not many bad scenes, but not many great scenes. Some nicely observed writing, but also some overly broad writing. I did make it through the whole film without once thinking of Soon-yi Previn, however, so I'm grateful to myself for that.
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (Errol Morris, 1997)Clowns? I had no idea I was signing up for clowns. Wtf, why didn't someone warn me? I thought we were friends.
It's hard for me to remember what else this film was about. Those brief moments of clown terror really overshadow everything. Wait, it's coming back to me. There was a wild animal trainer and a robot scientist and a topiary gardener and a mole-rat expert. They said stuff into the camera. Then there was a bunch of pretty (terrifying) circus B-roll shot by the awesome Robert Richardson. Oh, and there were fantastic excerpts from some ridiculous old movie serials produced by Republic and Universal Studios. And the music, I can't forget the music — a relentless, propulsively meditative score by Caleb Sampson.
Those were all the elements, I think. Then some noble editors mixed them all together and a documentary was born. And that resulting film is never boring. There's always something interesting going on, either visually, sonically, or philosophically. In a way, though, it's the kind of film where you get out whatever you yourself put in. Morris makes a few loose connections here and there, but you could write fifty different papers about the "core idea" of the film — personal obsession, God in the modern world, man vs. nature, evolution, etc. — and all fifty could be perfectly valid.
That's not a criticism, by the way. I dig that sort of thing. It's sort of the documentary equivalent of a film like
Mulholland Dr — you don't have to 'get' it, you can just enjoy letting it wash over you. And that's pretty much how I viewed
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. About half way through, I gave up trying to tease out a thesis and just savored the individual elements. I would have preferred to have a few more personal epiphanies, but I didn't let their absence discourage me too much.
Glancing at reviews, I saw some suggestion that Morris is making fun of his characters. I didn't see that at all. However, I should say something more negative here because I haven't made it clear that I was actually kind of disappointed in the film. Was it just the clowns? No, there was something else... Well, I guess it all goes back to the idea that the film never quite coheres, except tonally. And Morris never quite gets as much out of the topiary gardener and the mole-rat expert as he does the robot scientist and the wild animal trainer. That's understandable, in a way — robots and the big top are much more interesting, visually, than static topiary bushes and ugly rodents scurrying through plastic tubes — but it's one more aspect that keeps the film from feeling fully formed.
Verdict: Husbands and Wives ekes out a B-, while
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control nets a strong B with good potential for improvement on a second viewing. And another documentary moves on to round two.