5 Moments That Made the Movies in 2014

A couple years ago my favorite film critic, David Thomson, put out a book titled “Moments That Made the Movies”, a compilation that focused, as you might surmise, on specific moments from specific films. In keeping with its spirit, the venerable web site Indiewire asked the incredibly esteemed Mr. Thomson to digress on the five moments that made the movies in 2013. It does not, however, appear that he took up the same task for 2014, which is where Cinema Romantico comes in.

To be sure, taking this torch from Mr. Thomson is an act of pure idiocy. I am essentially Nicholas Sparks to his Leo Tolstoy, and yet, like the fool I am, I must forge ahead, even as I suspect he’d look at my moments, his eyebrows raised quizzically, and query: “Those?”

5 Moments That Made the Movies in 2014

Morgan Freeman is legendarily a vocally resonant actor. He’s the go-to for voiceover gospel. He’s played the President, he’s played Nelson Mandela, he’s played God. Which is why when he’s prodded into stupefied stammering, you sit up and take notice. This occurs in “Lucy” when the titular character is getting all #science on him. The titular character is played by Scarlett Johansson. There is a lot of gobbledygook regarding Movie Stars these days; who they are, how they are defined, whether they exist. Well, put away your op-eds and, for God sakes, stuff a sock in those think pieces. Lauren Bacall became a Movie Star when she made the most cynical man in showbiz smile; Scarlett Johansson became a Movie Star when she turned the most melodious man in showbiz verbally inept.

“Somehow Doug feels that this stuff defines him.” That’s what the wife of Doug Brown, former chief engineer of the Deepwater Horizon, says in “The Great Invisible”, a riveting documentary chronicling the gulf oil spill. “The stuff” to which she refers is his Transocean and BP accouterments, kept in a box out in the garage that he has held onto since the 2010 disaster, even in the face of worker’s comp claims, post-traumatic stress and a suicide attempt. It’s revealed, in fact, terribly, that it was among these personal effects where he had planned on taking his own life. That which gives us life, threatens to snuff it out, an apt metaphor for the oil industry, and for this whole fucked up world.

It’s pretty much what you’d expect a foot chase in Wes Anderson Land to be – a gruff, affectation-afflicted Willem Dafoe ominously following a goateed Jeff Goldblum on a train through marvelous European locale that winds up at the Zwinger Museum in Dresden where the clip-clop of the each man’s respective shoes echoes across the screen. But then, when the chase concludes, a door closes on Goldblum’s hand, slicing off his fingers and staining the blood with snow. Those saying “The Grand Budapest Hotel” garnering so much Oscar nomination love when previous Anderson works had failed to move the Academy's needle are apparently missing the encroachment of reality - actual reality, however small the doses - on the auteur’s fussy, fantastical aesthetic, whether in the form of a Wes-ed version of WWII or, as in this blurb's example, legit violence. Those missing fingers might be remembered as the moment Wes Anderson stopped being twee and started getting real.

Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and Mats (Kristofer Hivju) have spent a day on the slopes at a pristine Swedish ski resort. They relax in the sun with chalices of malted beverage. A lithe lady, several years their junior, approaches them and explains to Mats that her friend thinks Tomas is, like, the most handsome dude in the resort. Tomas struts his metaphorical feathers, never mind that he’s married with a couple kids. He’s a MAN. Then the lady re-approaches. She explains it was a mistake. She explains her friend meant some other guy was handsome. Mats, for reasons known only to the mind of dudes, takes offense and rises. An argument ensues. A guy approaches to calm things down. A shoving match breaks out. And all the while Tomas sits there, confused, defeated, emasculated. In that moment “Force Majeure” shatters the male ego so abruptly and enormously it makes five Goldman Sachs bros faint every time it screens.

Since the boy at the center of “Boyhood” was always going to have to reach the precipice of Manhood by the end we have known full well for the preceding two-and-a-half hours that this moment would arrive. By “this moment” I mean the moment when the boy, or Mason Jr.’s, mother, played by Patricia Arquette, would have to come to terms with her son standing at the precipice of Manhood, ready to go off on his own, represented by his departing for college. She sits at the table. She listens to him talk as teenagers boy do. She’s barely registering what he’s saying. We’re barely registering what he’s saying. LOOK AT HER! She breaks down crying. How can she not?! Her life is flashing before her eyes! Right here! At this table! All of it! And then she says the most terrifying thing, the thing that would have made Jack Torrance put down his axe and get misty-eyed, the thing that would have made a depressed Alien curl up for a long winter’s nap. She says: “I just thought there would be more.” If the film is a “gimmick”, as so many have claimed, then let them wait 'til the passage of time renders final judgement, as it surely will....then they'll see how gimmicky it is.

A Few Other 2014 Movie Shots I Love

I always write a lengthy diatribe about my favorite movie shot of the year (see: yesterday) but thought I might go one further this time around and pay homage to (rip off) my friend Ryan McNeil at The Matinee who annually puts up a hella awesome post in which he submits a few of his favorite movie shots of the year with no additional commentary. So here are a few of my favorite movie shots of the year with no additional commentary.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

“He certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.” This is how the protagonist of “Grand Budapest Hotel”, Monsieur Gustave H., dapper, detail-oriented concierge at the hotel of the title, played by Ralph Fiennes in a performance of remarkable layers, is summarily described in regards to his position. Yet, this phrase could just as aptly describe the film’s auteur, Wes Anderson. In one way, his seventh feature film is no different than his others, quirky, over-casted, inundated with heightened set design, and stuffed full frames. But in another way, this film is his most distinct, noticeably in the way some semblance of reality keeps trying to intrude in Wes’s Land of Make Believe. That reality never quite takes over can be attributed to Anderson’s dedication to sustaining his cinematic illusions with a marvelous grace.

Anderson’s films have often bore resemblance to novels, particularly “The Royal Tenenbaums”, but never quite so extravagantly as in “Grand Budapest Hotel.” The framing device features an aging author (Tom Wilkinson) in 1985 relaying the particulars of how a past work came to be at which point the film flashes back to a younger version of the author (Jude Law) in 1968 staying for a spell at the rusty relic the Grand Budapest Hotel has become where he meets Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), the eccentric owner of the faded palace. Mr. Moustafa then relays to the author how he came into ownership of the hotel at which point the film flashes back to a younger version of Moustafa in 1932, then called Zero (Tony Revelori), a Lobby Boy at the Grand Budapest in its heyday. He is the protégé of Gustave H. and the film pivots on their friendship and the forthcoming adventure.

In “Moonrise Kingdom” Anderson invented an island – New Penzance – but in “Grand Budapest Hotel” he invents a whole central European country, Zubrowka. That is also the name of a Polish vodka but Anderson shot the film throughout Germany, primarily in the state of Saxony, and most every shot here could double as a travel postcard on a rack at a ski chalet. By both referencing the disrepair into which the Grand Budapest eventually falls and setting the majority of the film in 1932 Europe on the eve of WWII, Anderson is pointedly serving up a decadent slice of nostalgia, a wishful reminder of the way things were before all means of military might tore through and ravaged the landscape.

Not that he denies the looming threats of terror. The approaching atrocities continually creep up around the edges of the film, insinuating themselves into the proceedings, such as in the undefined but S.S.-suggesting state police, only to be repelled by counter attacks of whimsy. This is the most violent film Anderson has made, which likely prompted the weird R rating, and while the violence is not exactly sickeningly gruesome and still artfully choreographed, it is nonetheless striking merely for existing. Willem Dafoe, in fact, stalks through the film like a European Anton Chigurh.

Ostensibly the film is a kind of comic caper, centered around Monsieur Gustave H.’s relationship with an aging tycoon (Tilda Swinton). When she dies, Gustave and Zero strike out for her estate, where they learn, much to the dismay of her villainous son, the autterly Anderson-ian named Dimitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis (Adrien Brody), that she has left Gustave a priceless portrait. Alas, Gustave is accused of poisoning her, which lands him in prison which leads to a breakout and a chase and all sorts of moments and set pieces in between and after. The plot is not necessarily beside the point but atmosphere and character become the focus, even if many characters go no further than the essence of the actors playing them. Gustave, however, is something else entirely, played perfectly by Fiennes not only with droll verbal dexterity but with a noble professionalism.

A significant portion of the film stretches out to other finely rendered locales and yet, the spirit of the titular establishment, as introduced and asserted by Gustave, who is literally seen at a pulpit giving sermons to his fellow hoteliers, is never left behind. Why even when he and Zero make their cross-country trek to Madam D.’s funeral, they remain outfitted in their regimental workplace uniforms. His conciliatory role as concierge is what Gustave clings to in any given situation, constantly dousing himself in L’Air de Panache, as if to ensure his appearance is always at its most pleasing. Still, Gustave is prone to excessively brief if curse-ridden hissy fits, losing his cool and instantly regaining composure, suggesting cracks in that finely-calibrated Panache-infused exterior. And this is also suggestive of the cracks manifesting in the world which both he and his dearly beloved Grand Budapest inhabit.

Ultimately the hotel is an old world, pre-war symbol, memories pressed between the pages of Zero’s mind. In one sense, the film ends happily, but in another sense it very much does not. This is why Anderson opens the film by showing us what the Grand Budapest Hotel has become before showing us what it once was – he pines for the past, much like Mr. Moustafa, willingly staying in the servant’s quarters, a demonstration of painful longing. Gustave may have been adept at sustaining the illusion, but his mentor lost that skill somewhere along the way. And just past the marvelous shots and gracefully blocked set pieces of “Grand Budapest Hotel”, the first glimmer of Wes Anderson recognizing the folly of his own illusion comes into view.