My Cousin Rachel

Year of release: 2017              Directed by Roger Michell.                Starring Sam Claflin, Rachel Weisz, Iain Glen, Holliday Grainger, and Pierfrancesco Favino.

Compare and contrast the following sentences. “They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days.” “Did she; or didn’t she? Who’s to blame?” One of them is the opening to a masterpiece of 20th century literature, which brilliantly sets the stage for a world balanced between beauty and menace with an aura of perpetual ambiguity, wracked by guilt, inner torment, and memories. The other is the opening line of a film adapted from the Wikipedia summary of the same novel.

I will say right now, that on a technical level, this adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel is not a bad film. A couple clumsy edits aside, the cinematography is (mostly) gorgeous, the production design is exquisite, the acting is competent, and the directing passable. None of that makes up for the utter ruination of the novel, which as full disclosure, is one of my three favorite books.

The problems begin with the vapid opening line, which heavy-handedly suggests the conclusion of the story rather than introducing us to Philip (Sam Claflin) and giving us a background to make him sympathetic even as he makes reckless decisions throughout the course of the story. That background, which takes nearly eighty pages in the novel, is bull dozed through in about ten minutes as a prologue before the title card. That pacing barely relents for the remainder of the film.

We see throughout the film that Philip is a rash imprudent man, but since the film races through the story with equal recklessness, we never learn why. Thus we never understand the full tragedy or motivation behind his often conflicting actions.

We learn Philip was orphaned as a young boy, and his wealthy older cousin Ambrose took him in, despite the church ladies insisting a young boy needs to grow up around a woman, which is a hurried way of acknowledging Philip’s sexism and difficulty in relating to women. We do not see any of Philip’s fond or troubled memories with Ambrose that we do in the book, and the film completely omits the crucial detail that Philip worshiped Ambrose, embodying both his virtues and his faults.

The film then rushes to its next plot point to check off: Ambrose fell ill and went to Italy to recover. There, despite his self-affirmed perpetual bachelorhood, he fell in love with Rachel (Rachel Weisz) and married her. Then, Ambrose wrote one more letter to England in which he implored Philip to save him from Rachel who was poisoning him. Philip set out for Italy immediately, consumed with hatred for his murderous witch of a cousin, only to learn Ambrose had died of a brain tumor that made him paranoid and irrational.

Shortly afterwards Rachel comes to England to meet Philip, and when he sees her, his resentment instantly melts. In the scene where they first meet, Weisz embodies du Maurier’s title character so perfectly, that for a brief moment, I was almost swept away along with Philip and tempted to forgive the film its faults, but then it went and butchered her most crucial scenes by rushing through them, which undermined the gravity of Philip’s former antagonism.

The biggest problem with this film is that it seems to think that fidelity to the novel merely consists of hitting all the major plot points. With that it fundamentally misunderstands Daphne du Maurier. No one reads a du Maurier novel primarily for its plot. The biggest weakness of her breakthrough novel Jamaica Inn is the thin and kind of predictable plot. Nonetheless, that novel was successful because of its foreboding atmosphere, generating sympathy for its conflicted protagonist thrown into unethical situations against her will, and because of the way it powerfully painted the Cornish countryside as simultaneously dangerous and liberating. Foreboding atmosphere, morally compromised yet sympathetic protagonists, and a love for the Cornish countryside by the sea are the three things that made du Maurier the great writer she was. This film is interested in none of them.

It needs to be mentioned that Philip’s relationship with Louise (Holliday Grainger), the daughter of his godfather and estate manager Mr. Kendall (Iain Glen), and her unreturned affection for him is also glazed over, which makes her presence at later climactic scenes irrelevant. More damningly, it makes the film’s coda, which is not in the book, appalling not only for the way it downplays the horror of the story, but also for its sexist treatment of Louise and exoneration of Philip.

The greatest strength of du Maurier’s novel My Cousin Rachel is the perpetual ambiguity that hangs over the story. Did Rachel murder Ambrose, or did he have a brain tumor? Is she just careless with money, or is she hiding dark secrets for which she needs money? And finally, is she plotting to murder Philip, or not? The film takes very clear sides, so clear that the attempt to turn the tables is completely unbelievable. In stark contrast, the book builds its atmosphere of horror and tragedy by constantly allowing the reader to second guess himself. That sort of subtlety is as foreign to the film as Rachel’s mysterious Italian friend Rainaldi (Pierfrancesco Favino) is to England.

The last half hour of my screening was permeated with snickering from the audience. I could hardly blame them; the plot points which made sense in the novel, considering the guilt and uncertainty plaguing Philip, seemed ludicrous here with the film’s one sided approach to the central conflict. If there ever was an example of how to ruin a piece of source material while adhering to its major plot points, this would be it.

There will be worse movies I see this year; there have already been worse movies released. There will be none that I hate more than My Cousin Rachel.

 

Personal Recommendation: D-

Content advisory: Two non-graphic sexual encounters, an anachronistic obscenity, and a mild aura of menace.                 MPAA rating: PG-13

Suggested Audience: Teens and up.

 

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Year of release: 2017              Directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg.             Starring Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley.

I am not the biggest fan of Hans Zimmer – I often find his music too heavy handed and repetitive, but I have always enjoyed the work he and Klaus Badelt did for the initial Pirates of the Caribbean. The cues altered between ebullience and solemnity in a fittingly cartoonish way with simple, traditional orchestrations to match. The score for Dead Men Tell No Tales is composed by Geoff Zanelli but still utilizes all of Zimmer’s main themes; however, those themes are re-orchestrated so that the once light-hearted soundtrack is now overwrought with plodding cues that are too loud, too thick, and sadly rather lifeless.

It’s a fitting metaphor for this franchise.

Nowhere is that more apparent than Depp. I am someone who will defend his work in Curse of the Black Pearl as one of his three greatest performances and think he absolutely should have won the Oscar that year. In this film, he half-heartedly phones in a wooden parody of that performance from fourteen years ago, which is probably an all time career low for him (and yes, I’m considering Alice in Wonderland).

The rest of the cast has varying levels of success at finding the right level of camp for the material. Javier Bardem passably hisses his way through an undead Spanish pirate hunter, but for undead nemeses hunting Jack, both Bill Nighy and Geoffrey Rush did it better. Rush is back briefly for an attempt at nostalgia, as are Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. None of them are given anything to do, other than remind us how much better they were in the first film. As the new young love-struck couple, Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario are so obsessed with hammering home their one respective character trait that they move from no chemistry to negative chemistry as they actively make sure we have no interest in whether they succeed or not.

The plot revolves around Thwaites and Scodelario, as he is looking for the Trident of Poseidon to lift the curse on his father, and she wants to solve the map her unknown father left for her, which leads to the same place. For some mysterious reason, they also need Captain Jack Sparrow to get there, but he, his compass, and the Black Pearl have no bearing on the outcome at all. How they discover they need one another is never really explained. His name is Henry Turner (son of Will and Elizabeth) and she is Carina Smyth, a progressive woman of science who repeatedly insists she is not a witch, but an astronomer and horologist. It shouldn’t need explaining how the latter is received among pirates.

N.B. The word horologist didn’t exist until the 19th Century, about 70 or so years after this film. So with an anachronism like that, someone probably should check to see if she weighs the same as a duck, but I digress.

In terms of pacing, this one probably slightly improves on the previous film considering that it moves through its nonsensical plot at a slightly less lifeless rate, but on the other hand that plot is a blender full of ideas and characters with no real continuity. I suppose I also need to mention there are zombie sharks, and the film even makes that boring.

To be fair, there are brief lines and gags which recall the fun of the original, but those are few and far between.

At least we can say ending The Beatles is not the worst thing Sir Paul ever did.

 

Personal Recommendation: C-

Content advisory: Fairly intense action violence, gruesome imagery, and some off-colour humor.              MPAA rating: PG-13

Suggested Audience: Teens and up

 

Cléo from 5 to 7

Year of release: 1962              Directed by Agnès Varda.                  Starring Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray, and Dorothée Blanck.

Considering the techniques used in Cléo from 5 to 7, the film opens with two anomalies: a sequence shot in color and use of a God’s point of view shot. After the opening scene in which Cléo (Corinne Marchand) visits a fortune teller and asks to learn her fate via Tarot cards, we never see either technique again. The camera angle enables us to focus solely on the Tarot cards, which both Cléo and the fortune teller stare at intently, and which Cléo believes will determine whether her cancer test comes back positive or negative in two hours.

Staring or gazing, not only at others but ourselves as well, or even at mundane objects such as hats. It’s what everyone does, either intentionally or not, and the characters in Cléo from 5 to 7 are no exception. Beginning with the staring at the Tarot cards, director Angès Varda allows the viewer to gaze along with the characters. As soon as Cléo leaves, she stops by parallel mirrors and stares at infinite repetitions of herself, convinced that she has cancer, and taking solace that she still has her beauty, placing herself under the same ruthless examination that the world does.

The next 84 minutes play out in real time as Cléo prepares to hear the results of her biopsy, seeking sympathy from friends, lovers, and coworkers but receiving none. As her assistant Angèle (Dominique Davray) tells her, “Men will think she’s faking her illness for attention.” Angèle sees nothing wrong with this, accepting the notion that men gaze at women for their beauty as something women should relish. As a famous pop singer, Cléo has long relished this sort of attention, but faced with her impending morality, interactions with her boyfriend, songwriters, and even her assistant become trying.

Then she visits her friend Dorothée (Dorothée Blanck) who poses nude for a sculpting class. It’s the ultimate example of someone subjecting themselves to another’s gaze, and yet these artists clearly see her as an entire person and are not gazing for their own satisfaction. As might be expected, Cléo says she is way too self-conscious to be comfortable with nude modeling, but Dorothée says it is a joyful, liberating experience in which she can accept her body as it is, feeling neither proud nor ashamed of it, throwing off the gaze of society.

It’s the most clarifying moment in the film, in which we’re reminded why we gaze at any work of art: to see an entire picture inviting us beyond ourselves into a greater understanding of the whole. We see Cleo’s fear of death, the gaze she has subjected herself to, and her superstitious rituals for luck. It’s telling that she starts breaking those superstitions once she meets Dorothée. As Dorothée says, she doesn’t find nude modeling immodest; the transparency reveals truth.

And Varda herself does not let the viewer forget that he is gazing as well, challenging him to reconsider the way he looks at anything, not just the film itself. Several well placed cuts break the 30-degree rule, notably reminding us that we are gazing through the eye of the camera. For the hour and a half in which Cléo learns a new way to see herself and the world, Varda invites the viewer to do so as well.

 

Personal Recommendation: A-

Suggested Audience: Adults