Category: Films about disability

Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Passionate polemic against Vietnam, with a committed central performance – tough, angry viewing

Director: Oliver Stone

Cast: Tom Cruise (Ron Kovic), Willem Dafoe (Charlie), Kyra Sedgwick (Donna), Raymond J Barry (Eli Kovic), Jerry Levine (Steve Boyer), Frank Whaley (Timmy), Caroline Kava (Patricia Kovic), Cordelia Gonzalez (Maria Elena), Ed Lauter (Commander), John Getz (Major), Michael Wincott (Veteran), Edith Diaz (Madame), Stephen Baldwin (Billy), Bob Gunton (Doctor)

Ron Kovic and Oliver Stone shared the feelings of many of their generation: a deep and abiding feeling of betrayal about the war they were sold in Vietnam. Kovic entered Vietnam a passionate true-believer in the cause; he left a traumatised veteran, paralysed from the waist-down, facing a difficult journey of guilt and discovery that would lead him into a career of anti-war activism. Stone too left Vietnam, wounded and affected with PTSD. The two had collaborated on a screenplay of Kovic’s autobiography in the 70s, before funding fell through: Stone vowed he would make the film when he had the power: the success of Platoon and Wall Street gave him that.

It’s not a surprise, considering the understandable passion that went into it, that Born on the Fourth of July is a polemic. You can argue it’s a heavy-handed and virulent one: but then it’s hard to argue with the catastrophic impact over a decade of American foreign policy decisions had on generations across several countries. Could it have been anything else? Born can be an uncomfortable and relentless watch, and subtlety (as is often the case even in Stone’s best work) can be hard to spot. But is that a surprise when the whole film feels like a ferocious, cathartic cry of pain?

It follows a mildly fictionalised version of Kovic’s life (Kovic’s willingness to adapt his life, drew some fire at the time – particularly as he was considering a run for Congress) starting with his childhood, through his teenage enlistment, the shocking horror of Vietnam, his limited recovery in under-funded veteran hospitals, his growing discomfort with the attempt by some (including his passionately conservative mother) to celebrate sacrifices he increasingly feels were misguided and wrong, culminating in his joining the ranks of the same long-haired protestors he spoke of disparagingly earlier.

Through it all, Kovic is played with a searing intensity by Tom Cruise. Cruise was a controversial choice – seen as little more than a cocky cocktail juggling, jet piloting, superstar (despite measured, subtle turns in The Color of Money and Rain Man). It feels a lot more logical today, now that Cruise’s Day-Lewis commitment to projects is well-known. It’s a raw, open and vulnerable performance with Cruise expertly inverting the cocksure confidence of his persona (and the earlier scenes), to portray a man deeply in denial at his injuries (internal and external), with resentment, anger and self-loathing increasingly taking hold of him.

Kovic is a man who never gives up: be that a misguided (and in the end almost fatal) attempt to defy medical advice that he will never walk again, to embracing the anti-war cause with the same never-say-die attitude he signed up to the military with. What Stone and Cruise bring out, is the huge cost to Kovic of working out the fights worth having: from his student days training days on hand for a wrestling bout he loses, to is military career, to activism, it’s a long, difficult journey.

It’s a performance that understands the crippling burden of guilt. Cruise commits to Kovic’s rage, but always keeps track of the vulnerable, damaged, scared soul underneath. He never allows us to forget this is a man eating himself up, not with resentment at his injury, but guilt at his actions in Vietnam – from being part of a mission that pointlessly machine-gunned women and children, to his own accidental shooting of a fellow marine. As you would expect from Stone, Born’s view of Vietnam is bleak: pointless, disorganised missions, led from the rear by incompetent or uncaring officers, where the only victims are innocent civilians or GIs.

That’s perhaps the key about Born. Kovic is not motivated primarily by his injuries. Those are the results of the risks he chose and, to a certain degree, he accepts them. What motivates him is guilt: throughout he is haunted by the crying of the Vietnamese baby he was ordered to leave in the arms of its deceased mother while also struggling to accept his guilt at his friendly fire killing. These feelings fuel his self-loathing, and his anger rightly develops against the lies he was told that led him to commit those acts.

Stone’s film is unrelentingly critical of the mythologising of armed American intervention, and the assumption (often parroted by those who stay at home) that it can never be anything other than completely righteous. It’s a society where (as happens in the film’s opening) children play at soldiers, watch parades of veterans (the young Kovic fails to clock the flinching of these veterans – one played by the real Kovic – at rifle fire, seeing only what he wants to see) and, as young men, are sold tales of duty, sacrifice and heroism. Kovic is too young and fired-up to notice the reluctant pain of his veteran dad (a superbly low-key Raymond J Barry), clearly struggling with his own trauma.

Much as the film paints one of Kovic’s friends in a negative light – like a young Gecko he heads to college, states all this talk of Communism conquering the world is propaganda bullshit and sets up a burger chain where he brags about fleecing the customers and groping the female staff – it also can’t but admit that when it came to Vietnam, he was right. Similarly, Stone is critical of Kovic’s ambitious, apple-pie Mom (Caroline Kava, in a performance of infuriatingly smug certainty) who won’t hear a word against the war and demands achievement from her son, constantly stressing it must have been worth it.

It’s not a surprise one of Born’s most cathartic moment is when Kovic – Cruise’s performance hitting new heights of unleashed resentment – rails late-at-night at his Mom, calling out her upbringing of unquestioning patriotism and saintly conformity as nothing but an ocean of bullshit. It’s an outpouring that has been welling up since his return, looking for the right direction: snapping at protestors, doctors, his younger brother who dares to oppose the War. Born is about a man coming to terms with why he is so angry and finding the appropriate target: and it becomes the system that sent him on this journey, starting with his mother and onto his own government.

This would be the government that provides shabby hospitals, full of broken-down equipment, whacked out attendants and overworked, underqualified doctors. Stone’s camera pans along wards piled with rubbish and rats. The conditions here are, in many ways, worse than the Mexican villa where Kovic finds himself struggling to re-adjust, surrounded by other paralysed veterans (among them Willem Dafoe, as a seemingly mentor-like figure with uncurdled rage just below the surface). Stone’s film never once loses its righteous fury at how a generation was let down by its leaders on every level.

So it’s not surprising Born is a fiercely polemic work. And, yes, that does sometimes reduce its interest and make it an unrelentingly grim watch (Stone isn’t interested in putting any other side of the argument in here). But it’s extremely well made (Robert Richardson’s excellent photography uses tints of red, white and blue at key points to brilliantly stress mood) and you can feel the heart Stone (who won a second directing Oscar for this) put into it. Its impact comes down to how much you engage with the passionate, furious argument its making: connect with it and it’s a very powerful film.

Johnny Belinda (1948)

Small-town drama is a beautifully done exploration of prejudice with excellent performances

Director: Jean Negulesco

Cast: Jane Wyman (Belinda MacDonald), Lew Ayres (Dr Robert Richardson), Charles Bickford (Blackie MacDonald), Agnes Moorehead (Aggie MacDonald), Stephen McNally (Locky McCormick), Jan Sterling (Stella), Rosalind Ivey (Mrs Poggerty), Dan Seymour (Pacquet), Mabel Paige (Mrs Lutz), Alan Napier (Defence Attorney)

Small towns. Sometimes they’re safe, cosy little havens of the familiar. And sometimes they’re bitchy places of resentment and suspicion where everyone judges everyone else’s business. In an environment like that, it doesn’t pay to be different. Belinda MacDonald (Jane Wyman) is as different as they come: a deaf and dumb young woman, who (despite her intelligence and warmth) everyone assumes is a mentally deficient. Just as different, in a way, is Dr Richardson (Lew Ayres), a compassionate, well-educated man who forms his own opinions and is oblivious to other’s prejudices. Life’s going to be tough for this pair.

Dr Richardson is the only person in this small Canadian fishing town who can see the bright, vivacious young woman Belinda is. With his support, her father Blackie (Charles Bickford) rediscovers his love for a daughter, who he always blamed for her mother’s death in childbirth, while her austere aunt Aggie (Agnes Moorehead) thaws and proves her loyalty. Belinda will need them when she is raped by the popular Lucky (Stephen McNally) and trauma leaves her unable to remember who is responsible for the resulting child. The town, of course, blames Dr Richardson.

Johnny Belinda has all the ingredients of a melodrama: but it surprises as a mature, sensitive and moving story about real people. It’s amazing to see a 40s film this frank about rape and an illegitimate child, that lays not a finger of reproach on the victim, instead turning its fire on the small-minded judgements of those around her. It’s also striking it doesn’t define Belinda solely as a victim, either of deafness or rape. She gives birth to a child she dearly loves, refuses to let what’s happened haunt her and sees her life as one with blessings rather than curses. But neither is she an angelic character, being at times as capable of mistakes and quick judgements as the rest of us.

It helps that Jane Wyman (in an Oscar-winning turn) gives a perfectly judged performance. She’s never winsome or cloying, but fills Belinda with an uncomplaining grit to make the best of things, matched with a growing joy as her opportunities expand, from her discovery of sign language to the birth of her child. In complete silence (Wyman intensively learned sign), Wyman employs her expressive eyes to communicate a range of emotions from wonder to joy to fear to pain and grief (including a wordless rendition of the Lord’s Prayer). Belinda is a character we deeply empathise with, but never we nor the film treat her as an object of charity.

That also springs from Ayres’ Dr Richardson, a genial, kindly man whose inability to see the worst in people makes him a target-in-waiting for gossip. His less than regular attendance at Church has already raised question. Add his academic earnestness – and Ayres wonderfully embodies a man quietly passionate about making a difference – and you’ve got someone who doesn’t fit in a town that respects manly ruggedness. Richardson doesn’t pick up on this at all – just as he doesn’t even notice the clearly besotted devotion of his housekeeper Stella (an excellent portrait of quiet desperation by Jan Sterling).

Gossip is soon flying that Richardson is too close to Belinda. A trio of judgemental old woman, like Irish banshees, frequently stand on street corners to share little tit-bits of meanness. The town punches down on outsiders, fitting people into insultingly simple brackets. It’s partly why immigrant shop-owner Pacquet (Dan Seymour) becomes the ringleader of a morality lynch mob: he’s all too aware it otherwise won’t be long before he’s the target again. No one, of course, can imagine for a moment that the carefree, rugged Lucky (Stephen McNally, a wonderful portrait of utterly smackable shallow vileness) could be the sort of cruel, cowardly cad he is.

A cad who takes notice of a newly confident Belinda – and not in a good way. Part of Johnny Belinda’s power is you can sense the latent danger in those eyes on a newly radiant and confident Belinda at a town shindig, the shy wallflower turned smiling young woman enjoying the music through feeling the vibrations of a violin string (a lovely moment, played with a real burgeoning wonder by Wyman). It’s a mark of the cruelty of the world that this confidence just makes Belinda a target for the vile Lucky.

Again, it’s a mark of Johnny Belinda’s success that the cruelty of what happens hits so hard. Rarely have I despised a film villain as much as Lucky, perhaps because he’s so weak, snivelling and arrogant – the sort of guy so arrogant and stupid he crows over the good-looks of his illegitimate son. He’s a picture of the real villains out there: the weak, stupid and shallow who always get passes from those around them.

Johnny Belinda creates deep, engaging characters. Charles Bickford’s Blackie is presented as first as a gruff, careless father. But the film – and Bickford’s performance – slowly unpeels him as a tender, caring and decent man. The sort of man whose first instinct is to protect, who delights in his unexpected grandson and is thrilled with the excitement of sign language. Similarly, Agnes Moorehead gives a terrific performance as a woman who seems at first a bullying harridan, but becomes a pillar of familial strength. (Both of them and Ayres were Oscar nominated, Johnny Belinda one of the few films to get nominations in every acting category).

This affecting story of people who feel real and three-dimensional, is well directed with restraint and care by Jean Negulesco (easily his finest film) and shot with a real beauty in its rugged Canadian sea-town visuals by Ted McCord. Max Steiner’s excellent score mixes emotional melody with sea shanty influences. It’s a world where intense but very real emotions help ground a story of rape, murder, scarlet letters and court cases into something that feels real and relatable.

Johnny Belinda feels like an overlooked gem, a sort of perfect example of Hollywood issue film where the ‘issue’ isn’t pounded over our head but built organically into the plot. One where characters surprise us with developments that feel real, embodied by a series of excellent actors at the top of their game. It’s a small gem that deserves to be better known.

Scent of a Woman (1992)

Pacino roars to Oscar-glory with an impressive turn in an enjoyable but predictable coming-of-age drama

Director: Martin Brest

Cast: Al Pacino (Lt Col Frank Slade), Chris O’Donnell (Charlie Simms), James Rebhorn (Mr Trask), Gabrielle Anwar (Donna), Philip Seymour Hoffman (George Willis Jnr), Ron Eldard (Officer Gore), Richard Venture (Willie Slade), Bradley Whitford (Randy), Nicholas Sadler (Harry Havemeyer)

Hoo-ha! It took eight nominations, but Pacino finally lifted the Oscar for his abrasive, damaged, charismatic turn as blind retired army Lt Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman. It’s not really a surprise: it’s a gift of a part, tailor-made for an actor as in love with bombast as Pacino to rip into, and rip he does. But he also manages to find the moments of gentleness, pathos, fear and self-loathing while expertly calibrating his internal acting dial to pings with explosive entertainment when the big show-stopping speeches come. It’s a million miles away from Michael Corleone’s bolted down, internalised rage – but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Pacino picks Scent of a Woman up and carries it single- handedly through enemy lines. Almost nothing will surprise you in this cosily familiar mix of coming-of-age posh-school drama and well-worn “odd couple” friendship, where an abrasive older guy toughens up a reluctant mild protégé. But, whaddya know, the kid also softens the old guy up. Charlie Sims (Chris O’Donnell), decent and polite scholarship kid at super-posh Baird school, faces expulsion because his principles won’t let him snitch on the spoilt, trust-fund, tosspot kids who played a prank on the school’s sanctimonious headmaster (James Rebhorn). Taking Thanksgiving to think about what to do, he accepts a job looking after Slade who promptly ropes him into a trip to New York, where the blind Slade plans on one final glorious weekend before blowing his brains out in a five-star hotel.

Of course, the film doesn’t end with Pacino’s little grey cells dripping down the side of the Waldorf’s no-expense-spared wallpaper. It will not surprise you at all that Martin Brest’s film heading where all feel-good films like this head: learned lessons, love of life re-embraced and a big speech from the big star solving all the problems. Scent of a Woman’s biggest flaw is it takes a very long time to hit all these familiar beats on the way towards its cookie-cutter capping of its coming-of-age/road trip set-up. Martin Brest was never a director to tell a story in a few sentences when a whole chapter would do, and Scent of a Woman is the last time he got the balance right between the length of the journey and the pleasure of being on it.

But then, as mentioned, a lion’s share of the credit belongs to Pacino. Surly but with just enough cheek. charm and biting wit, it’s a hugely entertaining role with big meaty speeches to chew on. Pacino makes it very funny, from his don’t-give-a-crap rudeness to his don’t-take-no-for-an-answer insistence on getting his own way. The film gives him a memorable set-piece moment pretty much every 15 minutes: his surly introduction, via a speech on the beautiful scents of women, the film’s iconic tango-dancing with Gabrielle Anwar, driving a Ferrari around the empty streets of the Bronx (and convincing a cop who pulls him over that he’s not blind), a thwarted suicide with the sort of barked refrain Pacino loves (“I’m in the DARK here!”) to a leave-no-prisoners final “courtroom” speech that’s one of the best of its kind. This is all meat and drink for Pacino.

But this is a more nuanced performance than just a star’s turn. Pacino makes Slade a deeply unhappy man, slowly realising he has been so most of his life. A man who uses anger, wit and cruelty as shields to drive people away and make himself look and feel tough. Blindness has become a constant reminder of his vulnerability and dependence, but also made the shell of isolation he has built around himself all consuming. He’s realising pretty much everyone he knows hates him, whose family (from youngest to oldest) want as little to do with him as possible, who has never had a meaningful relationship and clings to a war record he frequently garnishes to appear more important. Pacino manages to convey all this deep-down regret and self-loathing extremely well, matched with a physically dedicated performance of approximating blindness that is one of the best there is on film.

There’s a striking scene midway through where Slade crashes his brother’s Thanksgiving dinner. The family are less than happy to see him, but tolerate him at a table he dominates, first with garrulous (uninvited) army stories and then increasingly rude, sexual comments about his nephew’s wife. The nephew (Bradley Whitford) eventually tears him off a strip: in 1992 some felt sorry for this merciless puncturing of Slade’s self-mythologising, but today I can’t help but agree with Whitford’s takedown of Slade’s bullying. Slade’s eventual assault on his nephew is allegedly for calling Charlie “Chuck” once too often, but really feels like a desperate attempt to take revenge without feeling in the wrong. It’s a scene that actually cements what an awful negative force Slade has been, something he’s just starting to realise no end of whimsy can fix. This is a complex stuff among the Hoo-Ha.

Pacino’s helped by a very fine, generous performance from Chris O’Donnell as a young man who may be naïve and innocent but, in his own way, has more guts and integrity than the mercurial Slade ever did. While Slade is fundamentally selfish (and always has been), Charlie will make sacrifices for people he knows will never do the same for him and won’t flex his principles for any personal gain. O’Donnell also does some magnificent reacting throughout, frequently generously providing the dramatic context and crucial reaction points to make Pacino’s character work effectively.

Scent of a Woman’s posh-school drama provides a few more straight-forward figures of loathing: from James Rebhorn’s headmaster, via Philip Seymour Hoffman’s smug, gutless, entitled fellow student (a prototype of his role in The Talented Mr Ripley) who hangs Charlie out to dry, culminating in the three unbearably arrogant rich kids who carry out the prank. In some ways the plot here is far more engaging than Slade’s suicide run, even though nothing surprising really happens at all throughout it’s runtime. It also allows Brest to caps it off with such a dynamite speech from Pacino that it made the Oscar probably a foregone decision (even though Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X could feel rightly aggrieved at missing out on the little bald man).

That kind of sums the whole film up. Despite moments of complexity in its character study – forcefully delivered with depth and feeling by Pacino – Scent of a Woman is a film that offers virtually no surprises at all while expertly hitting every single beat you would expect to see while giving maximum entertainment factor along the way. It’s the sort of thing that Oscars are grown from.

CODA (2021)

Surprise Oscar-winner is reassuring, unsurprising feel-good fare, charming but crammed with familiar beats

Director: Sian Heder

Cast: Emilia Jones (Ruby Rossi), Marlee Matlin (Jackie Rossi), Troy Kotsur (Frank Rossi), Daniel Durant (Leo Rossi), Eugenio Derbez (Bernardo Villalobos), Ferdia Walsh-Peele (Miles), May Forsyth (Gertie)

Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) feels like she has been working her whole life. The only hearing person in a deaf family, she’s both translator and interpreter. She works early morning shifts on their fishing ship with her father, the imposing-but-playful Frank (Troy Kotsur), and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant), and butts heads with her former-beauty-queen mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin). After graduating from high school, Ruby assumes this will be the rest of her life: until music teacher Mr Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez) helps her discover her gift for singing and, suddenly, a new future of Berkle Music College is possible. But can she balance the conflicting demands of her family and dreams?

CODA is an eminently likeable, thoroughly unchallenging film. If someone dumped a pad down in front of you and asked you to guess, sight unseen, what its main plot beats would be, pretty much anyone who has ever seen a movie would nail 90% of them. But it’s a well-told, charming small-scale story, with a positive perspective on disability and tugs heartstrings with the assured skill of a master. In the end it doesn’t really matter that nothing in it is remotely surprising, challenging or unexpected, because it delivers exactly the emotional response the viewer is likely to want from it.

It’s a film about communication. The Rossi’s need Ruby’s ability to hear, and her ease with spoken English, to navigate the world around them in the fastest, smoothest way. Ruby, meanwhile, is struggling to communicate her own passions, after a lifetime of adapting herself to her family. Unlike them, she wants more than a life on the docks. This guilty conflict with the family she adores ironically makes her constantly avoid communication both with her family and her music teacher (investing his personal time and money in her) about the pressure slowly crushing her.

These increasingly conflicted desires and choices form the film’s heart. Will Ruby make her own life, or stay with her family for as long as they need her? It’s not helped by the fact that her talent (out of all the talents in the world) is one her family can’t fully share in, meaning they struggle to understand her dilemma. (Her mother outright sees Ruby’s singing as nothing more than teenage rebellion – stating if her parents were blind, Ruby would have embraced painting). On top of which, Ruby’s genuinely loving (but insular) family have been her whole world for as long as she can remember.

The Rossis are vibrant and warm-hearted with a salty sense of humour and a stubborn independent streak. Jackie and Frank are so infatuated with each other (even after decades of marriage) they frequently engage in noisy sex (much to the embarrassment of Ruby, when a visit from a would-be boyfriend is interrupted by some extremely loud, bed pounding coitus from next door). They delight in teasing each other – from Leo and Ruby’s inventive sign-language insults for each other to the hilariously intentionally explicit sign-language safe-sex lecture Frank gives Ruby and her prospective boyfriend. But they are also a tight-team, seeing themselves as having to fight for their place in the world and discussing problems with the low income of the fishing business as a unit.

CODA is keen to establish the Rossis not as victims or people the audience should feel sorry for, but as a warm and loving family of everyday working-class Americans, who just happen to be deaf. It’s part of the film’s challenging of perceptions around disability. Frank continues a fishing business started by his father, which he intends to hand to his son, and (eventually) steps up to become a leader in his community. Jackie is a chippy, opinionated woman who still loves the glitz and glamour of her old beauty pageant days while getting stuck into managing the family’s new business interests. All of them are vibrant and romantic, sexual people, confident in themselves and who they are, far from the passive recipients of charity and help that so many disabled people in film have been.

But CODA dodges more challenging questions around disability. It never really engages with the implication that the Rossi family have got so used to having a full-time, free translator, that they have become disconnected from the world around them. I can’t help but feel there is a germ of a more interesting film here about the family (however inadvertently) allowing themselves to be cut off from others. They have let their ability to lip-read slip, filter all their communication with anyone outside the family through Ruby, and have grown so used to her manning the radio for their fishing business that they can’t run the boat effectively without her (leading to inevitable coastguard trouble).

It’s also had a knock-on effect in the fishing community: the other fishermen have clearly never had to really build a relationship with the Rossi’s (after decades, no one on the docks has learned even the most rudimentary sign language or any communication techniques like moving lips clearly when speaking). Jackie is outright resentful of the hearing wives of the other fishermen and neither she nor Frank can imagine actually running a business without Ruby’s to handle literally all the verbal communication involved. The closest the film comes to addressing this is Leo angrily telling Ruby the family aren’t helpless – they managed before she was born and they will if she leaves. But the film doesn’t want to explore the implication that the Rossis allowed themselves to slip into a comfort zone that ultimately proves isolating and even damaging for them.

CODA does get some good material from their struggle to engage with music (even if this is an uncomfortable cliché for some in the deaf community). There are well-staged moments, such as the Rossis attending Ruby’s graduation concert, where we “hear” what they hear (nothing) and need to judge the performance, like they do, from the reactions of those around them. A scene where Frank finally appreciates part of his daughter’s skill by feeling the vibrations of her singing is done with real emotional force. However, it cheats by feeding this into an off-stage conversion where the family switch (overnight) from hesitant to “all-in” for a classic last-minute-dash to get Ruby to her audition.

That’s representative of CODA shifting away from more complex, challenging themes and issues for a heart-warmingly positive tale, familiar from dozens of movies past. Saying that, Heder does a good job pulling together the familiar elements, and Troy Kotsur (Oscar winning) and Marlee Matlin both give emotionally rich performances as the parents. Ruby is excellently played by Emilia Jones – who spent months learning sign language in order to perform the part and improvise with the other actors. But CODA feels like a gentle, consensus film full of pleasant moments and reassuring insights that love will overcome, which perhaps explains why it won an Oscar in a year of more divisive films. There is nothing in it that could possibly rile you up or shake your faith in the decency of ordinary people. CODA is a film designed to wrap around you like a comfort blanket.

Cyrano (2021)

Slight but enjoyable musical, with the flaws of the original but some virtues of its own

Director: Joe Wright

Cast: Peter Dinklage (Cyrano de Bergerac), Haley Bennett (Roxanne), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Christian de Neuvillette), Ben Mendelsohn (De Guiche), Monica Dolan (Marie), Bashir Salahuddin (Le Bret), Joshua James (Valvert), Anjana Vasan (Sister Claire), Ruth Sheen (Mother Marthe), Mark Benton (Montfleury), Richard McCabe (Priest), Peter Wight (Ragueneau)

Edmond Rostand’s play has been reinvented time-and-time again. After all, who can’t relate to a man convinced he’s unlovable and uses his poetic heart to write the words to help his rival woo the woman they both love. Erica Schmidt’s stage musical with songs by Aaron and Bryce Dessner from The National, pretty much keeps everything but kicks out the famous oversize nose in favour of making Cyrano a man with dwarfism. Bringing him to life – both here and on stage – is Schmidt’s husband Peter Dinklage, with his stage and screen love Roxanne portrayed by Haley Bennett, wife of Cyrano’s director Joe Wright.

It all helps create an easy-going feeling to Cyrano, a decent, at times impressive musical, that never quite turns into something really lasting but presents several fine songs in its middle act. It’s unfortunate that it’s opening section – and largely forgettable initial number – set the scene less than compellingly, dutifully repeating Rostand via a show-boating Cyrano easily besting a preening actor in a battle of wits, all while casting faintly longing looks at impressed Roxanne. What it doesn’t really do is seize the attention. In fact, what it does is really remind you what a slight story Cyrano de Bergerac really is: and that it only really starts with the Act Two introduction of Christian.

It’s certainly, it feels, where Wright’s interest begins. The romantic triangle between the three – Cyrano and Christian both in love with Roxanne, Roxanne in love with Christian and (perhaps) sub-consciously with Cyrano – introduces drama and stakes into a film that until then largely lacks either. Contrasts are drawn between Cyrano and Christian who share honour and decency, but are polar opposites in terms of confidence. Christian is physically and socially assured but crippled with inarticulate shyness when asked to speak; Cyrano can turn his feelings into poetry, but is convinced he is an unlovable imp, his confidence forever crushed by his appearance.

The concept of exchanging oversize nose for Dinklage’s dwarfism works rather well, when every single camera angle constantly reminds us of Cyrano’s otherness. It also gives a wonderful showpiece for the excellent Dinklage, who brings an intense, grungy charisma to the role. He can do the Cyrano’s performative showmanship, but also expertly demonstrates this is a front to protect his true self from being seen and potentially rejected. It becomes clear Cyrano partly embraces his titanic ghost-writing (hundreds and hundreds of pages), without Christian’s knowledge, because he genuinely feels it is the closest he can come to experiencing a relationship, just as he believes should he ever speak his true feelings they would inevitably be rejected. Dinklage does a wonderful job of balancing inner vulnerability with a mask of cocksure, arrogant confidence.

Cyrano certainly misses the subtle indicators, from the start, that Haley Bennett’s Roxanne might well have feelings for him. Aware that Cyrano de Bergerac often presents not the most flattering picture of Roxanne’s intelligence (she is a woman, after all, fooled for years into believing all those romantic words came from her husband not her lifelong friend). Bennett however let’s a – again perhaps subconscious – suspicion play just around the corner of her eyes, not to mention that her feelings for Cyrano feel a lot closer to romantic from the start. Is she as scared of rejection as Cyrano, put off by his independent front? After all she values honest feelings – and Christian, even if his words come from someone else, is clear about the way he feels in a way Cyrano never is. Kelvin Harrison Jr. is rather charming as this sweet, kind, strangely shy young man, tongue-tied and bemused by long words but with a strong sense of right and wrong.

The film – and the musical – is at its strongest when these three are interacting. Wright’s filmmaking also comes to life, with his more staid and traditional visual set-ups for the theatre-set prologue giving way (via a dynamic one-shot full of ducking and diving camerawork as Cyrano takes out ten assassins single-handed) to a series of balletic scenes. Large-scale musical numbers are accompanied by people going about every-day tasks with a wonderfully choreographed grace: be that bakers rhythmically kneading dough and stocking ovens, to a mass of soldiers fencing in perfect harmony. The songs also pick up considerably in both power and humability, culminating in the affecting Wherever I Fall, an eve-before-battle group number that sees Cyrano’s regiment preparing themselves for what could-be their final night, beautifully shot with a mist-filled coolness.

Cyrano’s slight story remains its weakness and the film can’t quite decide how to expand organically the deception plot at its heart. It’s almost a shame it bravely closes the door on the film’s most obvious protagonist, with Ben Mendelsohn’s De Guiche getting a scowling ‘villainy’ number but proving himself a man of honour. Fundamentally the long introduction to the set-up and the five-year-later coda the film wraps up with end-up feeling unsatisfying. It’s actually too faithful to Rostand, carrying across the original’s flaws. Cyrano embraces the mix of romance, comedy and sadness in its wooing-by-proxy and the odd-couple friendship between Cyrano and Christian, but feels more perfunctory as soon as it has to move beyond this section of the film.

It’s a shame as that central section is actually rather effective with Wright bringing the musical numbers in particular to life with a real delicate beauty. There are some very good performances, especially the heart-felt work from Dinklage, but it eventually strains towards an epic scale its story isn’t quite strong or engaging enough to support.

Awakenings (1990)

Decent performances from the leads can’t save a shamelessly manipulative, saccharine movie

Director: Penny Marshall

Cast: Robert De Niro (Leonard Lowe), Robin Williams (Dr Malcolm Sayer), Julie Kavner (Eleanor Costello), John Heard (Dr Kaufman), Penelope Ann Miller (Paula), Max von Sydow (Dr Peter Ingham), Ruth Nelson (Mrs Lowe), Alice Drummond (Lucy), Judith Malina (Rose), George Martin (Frank), Dexter Gordon (Rolando), Keith Diamond (Anthony), Anna Meare (Miriam), Mary Alice (Margaret)

There can be few things more terrifying than being trapped inside your own body, unable to engage with the world, but to be in a sort of waking coma for years. Imagine how wonderful – and how terrible – it might be if you briefly woke to normality, only to return to your catatonic shell? This actually happened to patients of Dr Oliver Sacks – here re-imagined as Dr Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) – in a Bronx hospital in 1969. Looking after catatonic survivors of the encephalitis lethargica epidemic of 1919-30, Sayer discovered they responded to certain stimuli: their name, music, catching balls etc. With an experimental drug he discovers he can restore the patients to ‘life’ – foremost among them Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro), just a boy when afflicted – only to discover the effects won’t last and they are doomed to return to their coma-like state.

It’s such a terrible thing to think about that it even gives genuine emotional force to Awakenings an otherwise hopelessly manipulative, sentimental film that plays like a TV-Movie weepie. It certainly didn’t need the naked emotional manipulation that washes over the whole thing like a wave, with Randy Newman’s sentimental, tear-jerking score swells with every single heart-string tucking moment. Awakenings is so determined to make you feel every single moment it eventually starts to make the story less affecting than it really is. A simpler, less strenuous film would have been more moving rather than this film almost genetically engineered into ‘life-affirming’.

Everything in Awakenings feels like it is always trying too hard. Every moment is laid on for maximum emotional impact. Adapted from Oliver Sacks’ book chronicling individual cases, it presents a stereotypical Hollywood ‘feelings’ film, with lessons for all. Worse, there is a tedious ‘seize the day’ message that keeps ringing out of the film. The awakening is, of course, not only literal but metaphorical – the patients (and their doctors) ‘awoke’ to appreciate life and living more. It’s hard not to think at times there is something rather patronising about partially using Leonard’s brief experience as a lesson for Dr Sayer to stop being so damn timid and ask a nurse out on a date. As traumatic as it is for Leonard to return to his coma, at least Dr Sayer learned to live a little!

It’s a very fake attempt at a hopeful ending to an otherwise down beat true-story. Dr Sayer is a retro-fitted version of Oliver Sacks, sharing many of his characteristics – but not his sexuality or decades long celibacy – and the film presents him, as Hollywood loves to with geniuses, as a shy, awkward type who no-one of course could expect anything of. He combines this with quiet maverick tendencies, putting the patients first against the ‘numbers-first-risk-free’ obstructionist bureaucrats (represented, of course, by John Heard, though he does thaw a little) who run the hospital and poo-poo his ideas.

Awakenings is full of sickly moments of heavy-handed sentimentality – its opening shot of Leonard as a boy carving his name in a bench under the Brooklyn Bridge tells you immediately one of the first places he’ll go as an adult for a wistful smile – that keep trying to do the work for you. (Of course, all the nurses and cleaning staff offer up cheques to help pay for the patients drugs!) The story doesn’t need it. Just seeing the facts of these vibrant adults emerge for a brief time in the sun is moving enough. Leonard quietly, but with dignity, asking the hospital board for permission to go outside alone is more moving than watching him forcibly dragged from the door by porters or seeing him rant on the mental ward he’s been consigned to as a punishment. We don’t need Sayer to literally tell us some things are too sad for him to film, when we can see it on Williams’ face.

The leads are not always immune to the try hard nature of the film, but they do some decent work. De Niro (Oscar-nominated) brings a touching sweetness to Leonard, essentially a boy who wakes in the body of an adult. There is a genuine wonder in his eyes at the world around him – wonder that transforms into frustration at the continued restrictions placed on his freedom. There is something slightly studied about the physical effects (especially in the film’s final act) but De Niro understands that underplaying and quiet honesty is more moving than when the film pushes him towards grandstanding.

Williams is also very good – if at times a little mannered – as the quiet, awkward Sayer. With the less flashy – but potentially more complex role – he again shows how close humour is to pathos. It’s a performance with several little eccentric comic touches, but wrapped up in a humanitarian shell of earnestness that is quite affecting. It’s a shame that the film constantly undermines his restraint by using every conceivable trick of framing, scoring and composition to wring sentiment from him.

But then that’s Awakenings all over. You can imagine the script covered with annotations along the lines of ‘make them cry here’. And it worked with a great many people, the mechanical nature of the film working overtime to tickle the tear ducts. But the film’s utterly unnatural sense of artifice constantly prevents you from really feeling it. You are always aware of Marshall nudging you to remind you of the unbearable emotion and the tragedy of lives not lived. All easily washed down in a narrative structure as old as the hills – Sayer is an outsider who proves himself, he and Leonard fall out then come back together stronger than ever etc. etc. – that continually reminds you of its functional, manipulative nature.

The Silence (1963)

Bergman’s third film in his “faith” trilogy, is an intriguing Sartresque puzzle

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Ingrid Thulin (Ester), Gunnel Lindblom (Anna), Jörgen Lindström (Johan), Birger Malmstein (Waiter), Håkan Jahnberg (Hotel porter)

Two sisters, Esther (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), mother to ten-year-old Johan (Jörgen Lindström), are travelling home on a train through Europe. Ester, a translator, is already ill and her health takes a sharp downturn, leading to the group being forced to rest in a hotel in a town called Timoka, in an unnamed (fictional) European country. Anna resents what she sees as the judgemental expectations of her older sister and sees her obligation to care for her as a burden. Over a few days in the hotel, the two sisters move awkwardly around each other, avoiding addressing their problems while struggling in a country where neither of them speak the language.

The Silence was the third, and final, film in Bergman’s loose thematic trilogy on the absence of God in the modern world. It’s also possibly his most bleak and Sartre influenced work so far, a film of oppressive silence (devoid of music, the only noises coming from objects in the rooms of the hotel) with events occurring in a disturbing, slightly surreal world, where the normal rules of human interaction seem to be hold. Perhaps that’s because the characters move, like ghosts, through a world where they have no ability to communicate other than stumbled words and hand gestures, residing in a hotel where there seems to be no timescale on how long they are (or have been) there.

It also feels like an entrée to Persona, Bergman’s next major work. Like that, The Silence revolves around a symbiotic relationship between two women, who together seem to form two halves of one personality. Esther is intellectual, reserved but also vulnerable and adrift, dependent on others for help and frequently resorting to drink to dull her pain. Anna is more earthy, sensual but insecure, resentful and feels judged by others, finding temporary peace in casual sexual encounters. Both sisters are locked in a relationship that feels both disconnected and mutually dependent, constantly clashing with each other but living in worlds defined by their feelings for the other.

They are played majestically by two performers at the height of their powers. Thulin seems cold but conveys great depths of pain and suffering beneath what seems like her confidence and assurance. Thulin’s expressive face communicates great emotional turmoil, even with only the slightest movements and gestures. It’s a beautifully delivered performance of a woman who is unknowable, distant, difficult but also highly sympathetic. Lindblom’s physical assurance is counter-balanced by the great uncertainty she manages to communicate in every beat of Anna’s life. Her general demeanour of icy chill, interrupted with emotional breakdowns which alternate rage with tears and hysterical laughter, is faultlessly delivered.

These two characters increasingly feel trapped inside a world where they can’t easily communicate, with the threat of turmoil constantly rumbling on the margins. This unnamed country teeters on the edge of war – tanks and other military equipment make constant intrusions on the streets and the train tracks and the rumble of planes can be heard in the air. They are also rendered increasingly mute and isolated by their inability to speak the language. Communication with people around them is impossible and understanding is only fractured.

This is where Bergman’s views on God slowly take their form. For, as he observed in other films in the trilogy, what is this world but one where we strain in vain for the voice of God? Isn’t that like being adrift in a country where the language is unknown? And if, as Bergman so heartily expresses elsewhere, God is love what does it mean that this film revolves around character who have such negative to indifferent opinions on others. Ester may love – as she argues – Anna, but Anna has interpreted this love as smothering and oppressive her whole life and rejects Anna utterly. Anna seems disinterested in her son Johan (who Ester yearns to be closer to, but can never quite find the way to close the gap) and impatient with her sister. Not only are the characters trapped in a world of silence, they are also trapped in circles of loveless relationships.

It’s striking then that this was Bergman’s most sexual film so far. Bizarrely – for a film as austere, glum and challenging as The Silence – it was a box-office hit. This was, in large part, connected to its comfort with sex scenes. Anna watches a couple sat next to her having passionate (and beautifully lit) sex in an opera house, before engaging in wordless (of course) intercourse with a waiter (Anna even mentions the benefits of the man not understanding a word she says). The more frustrated Ester masturbates alone – no coincidence that she later speaks of her disgust with the sexual act and its bodily fluids. This is a film without love but with a lot of base, meaningless, carnal love in it – all part of a Godless world leaning into its nihilistic close.

The Silence is extraordinary in its filmic confidence. It’s exquisitely shot by Sven Nykvist, his camera (far more mobile than almost any time before in Bergman) tracks down corridors and through rooms of its luxurious but chillingly empty hotel (you can see The Silence’s influence on Kubrick’s The Shining). It uses light, shade and shadow in strikingly meaningful ways, arcs of light suggesting a host of underlying emotions and unspoken longings.

The Silence is a film that invites analysis and theorising, partially because its characters speak in such gnomic, Bergmanesque mysteries. Some have theorised Johan is in fact Ester’s child, raised begrudgingly by Anna, now longed for by his real mother at her end. Some have suggested Ester and Anna are such contrasting sides they may in fact be the same person (traces of Lynch’s Mulholland Drive) others see an incestuous longing in Ester for her sister. Bergman increases the unknowing mystery by presenting much of the film from the perspective of the precocious (not many children read Turgenov) but innocent Johan, a child who sees but cannot interrogate the actions around him.

It makes The Silence feel like a bridge from one era of Bergman to the next. The last hurrah of his spiritual study, before a series of films that would explore the interconnected lives of women whose desires, needs and dependencies motivate and merge into each other. That makes it a fascinating and vital milestone in Bergman’s development – as well as another extraordinary, haunting and fascinating work from a great director.

Coming Home (1978)

Emotional but a little too worthy Vietnam message movie, well-directed with great performances

Director: Hal Ashby

Cast: Jane Fonda (Sally Hyde), Jon Voight (Luke Martin), Bruce Dern (Captain Bob Hyde), Penelope Milford (Vi Munson), Robert Carradine (Robert Munson), Robert Gintu (Sgt Dink Mobley), Mary Gregory (Martha Vickery), Kathleen Miller (Kathy Delise)

Vietnam is a jagged scar on the soul of America but, more than that, it’s been a literal scar for the veterans. Luke Martin (Jon Voight) was a college athletic star, now returned from the frontlines as an angry paraplegic, struggling with post-traumatic stress. Helping him – eventually – is old school-friend Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda), married to a Marine captain Bob (Bruce Dern) who has himself shipped out to Vietnam. Sally and Luke find themselves growing closer and closer emotionally, as their hostility towards the brutal war grows. But how will Bob – still loved by Sally and himself ever more scarred by trauma – react when he returns from the front?

Coming Home was released in the same year as The Deer Hunter and makes for an interesting comparison. While Cimino’s film is a horrific plunge into the grisly horrors of war, combined with a sort of mesmeric epic poetry, Ashby’s Coming Home is a quieter, more domestic piece, an earnest attempt to explore trauma. There is no doubting the passion of all those involved: but Coming Home is at times a little too earnest. Despite its moments of undeniable emotional impact, its sometimes feels a little too pointedly like a “message” film, worn a little too heavily on its sleeve.

But, saying that, there are many positives. It’s shot with a skilful casualness by Ashby, whose unobtrusive camera makes us a witness to events (at one crucial point it is even half obstructed by a door). Ashby has a poetic sensibility that flies in the face of what could have been its soapy roots. He lets scenes unfold with such ease and gentleness of touch that you only slowly notice how extremely well assembled the film is. There is a whimsical, lyrical sadness about the whole thing – matched with a striking lack of condemnation of people, only for a system that bends and twists human beings into killing machines.

It uses a parade of hit songs, but the songs play not as snippets but as full performances, playing out over several scenes, scenes which at first seem to be directly counter to the lyrics and tone of the song itself. Then you notice the skill with which the film has been edited to the beat of the music, and how much The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan and many others set the tone for a whole era. Coming Home captures this tone, an era of optimism crushed by brutal contact with the cold, dark realities of the world. The songs weave themselves in and out of scenes, capturing an overwhelming sense of a nation lost and confused.

It’s in this framework the relationship between Luke and Sally flourishes as Luke begins finding purpose in his life. Heavily based on the life of Ron Kovic, Jon Voight won an Oscar for his extraordinarily committed performance. From early outbursts of naked fury and pain, wheeling himself around on a hospital bed, his outbursts seemingly only prevented by medication, Voight charts the development of Luke as a humanitarian and compassionate man, committed to helping others overcome their pain and loss.

He also develops an attachment to Sally that transcends physical attraction: the two are kindred spirits. Fonda (effectively the film’s producer), generously takes on the film’s least interesting role as the disengaged, homespun Sally, increasingly horrified by the war’s impact on veterans – and the lack of interest from others (capturing the whole sweep-it-under-the-carpet attitude of the armed services, her military wives’ club refuses to include a report from Luke’s hospital in their newsletter because it’s too depressing). This translates into a deep attraction for Luke, the only other person who truly shares her growing resentment for the war.

Coming Home gained much attention at the time for its frank depiction of sex, with Luke and Sally tenderly overcoming the barriers of his disability. (Although today, their coupling – with Fonda replaced by a body double – culminating in Sally’s first ever orgasm feels a little too obvious in its comparisons with her passionless flings with Bob). But sex is less important than sharing their feelings, from Luke’s talk of dreams where he can still walk to Sally’s doubts about her life choices.

If there is a problem with Coming Home, it’s that the film doesn’t really know what to do with these characters other than showcase their pain. It tends to make sharp jumps – Luke’s recovery from initial rage to tender, thoughtful man feels very swift. And although Penelope Milford is good value as Sally’s best friend, struggling to deal with her veteran brother’s collapsing mental health, her plotline and performance is a little too obviously designed to contrast with Sally’s.

The basic problem with Coming Home is that in its rush to establish the fundamental decency of its characters – and the appalling horror of the war they are wrapped up in – it often avoids drama of struggle. It makes an interesting contrast with Zinnemann’s The Men which turned Brando’s paraplegic veteran’s psychological recovery into an entire movie: here Luke’s finding of a new purpose is as swift as his mood shift is.

The film’s most interesting plotline actually follows Dern’s Bob Hyde. Dern gives the film’s most complex performance as a dedicated solider, struggling with deep denial about his growing disaffection and unacknowledged PTSD, confronting his wife’s infidelity with a mix of anger and desperation to receive a comforting hug from her. Hyde’s discovery of the affair is its most melodramatic moment, but also strangely its most unpredictable – and a film exploring this character’s switch in perspective might just have been a little more challenging.

But Coming Home has plenty to recommend it. Voight has never been better, warm, tender and throbbing with emotion, his closing speech to a roomful of students exhorting them not to fight and choking back tears that taking another life is never worth it, is worth the price of admission alone. Ashby’s film has a poetic sensibility to it and if it sometimes feels a little too self-righteously earnest about its anti-war credentials, and a little too aware of its status as a “message movie”, at least it is a message that needs to be heard.

The Men (1950)

Brando makes his film debut in this earnest but realistic drama about paraplegic war veterans

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Cast: Marlon Brando (Ken Wilocek), Teresa Wright (Ellen), Everett Sloane (Dr Brock), Jack Webb (Norm), Richard Erdman (Leo), Arthur Jurado (Angel), Virginia Farmer (Nurse Robbins)

The Men opens with a thoughtful dedication to the two wars many soldiers have fought: the first with weapons, the second “with abiding faith and raw courage” against the physical and emotional consequences of the first. Fred Zinnemann’s documentary-influenced The Men takes a careful look at how the impact of that second war at a paraplegic veterans hospital. Ken Wilocek (Marlon Brando, in his film debut) is a former college sports star now confined to a wheelchair and struggling to adjust. His fiancé Ellen (Teresa Wright) is still eager to marry – but are either of them ready for the difficulties Ken will have adjusting his life?

The biggest strength of The Men – aside from its realist lack of flash – is how it avoids easy answers to big questions. Sure, Carl Foreman’s script has a tendency to lean into a mix of relationship drama and information film. But in looking at Ellen and Ken’s wedding night (and, in a neat visual metaphor of a misfiring champagne bottle, their likely sex lives), The Men is coldly realistic. Ellen might be largely presented as a picture-perfect ideal woman – but even she is freaked out by Ken’s squeaky wheelchair, twitching leg, implied impotence and the thought of what she has let herself in for.

That’s as nothing to the self-loathing fury – directed into rage at Ellen – Ken feels. This man who defined himself by machismo and physicality, who labours for weeks to stand upright so he can get married at the alter (it’s a sign of the film’s avoidance of easy solutions that, despite this, Ken still falls over at the alter) suddenly realises that he will always be partially dependent on his wife for simple tasks. He’ll never be the provider he expected to be – and he’ll never be able to fulfil some of his wife’s sexual needs. A proud man, no wonder the realisation throws him into depression.

It’s moments like this when Zinnemann’s film is at its strongest. It’s a film surprisingly frank and (for the time) daring about the emotional and physical consequences of war injury. Everett Sloane’s impassioned doctor is introduced warning wives and mothers about the consequences of paraplegia and the difficulties emotionally, physically and (he all but says) sexually they will have – but he might as well be talking direct to the camera informing the audience.

ZInnemann’s film, in a dispassionate but respectful way shows the process of rehabilitation, its strengths and its weaknesses. From physical training to the difficult emotional adjustments. The film used several real-life veterans – including Arthur Jurado in a key role as a Latino paraplegic holding onto optimism – and worked closely with hospital medical staff (some of whom appear as themselves). There is a solid sense of respectful realism about the whole thing. (You can feel the hand of producer Stanley Kramer.)

He’s also helped hugely by a powerful, committed and complex performance from Brando in the lead role. Making his first film, Brando astounded Zinnemann and the crew with his commitment. Effectively Brando “learned” to be paraplegic, forming deep friendships with the veterans (far more allegedly than with his fellow actors). His performance is a searing collection of contradictions. Ken is boyish, eager and lets excitement flash across his face when playing sports or driving an adjusted car for the first time. But he’s just as apt to be surly, resentful and bitter, to snap at those trying to help him and furious at the failings his own body have forced on him.

It comes to a head at that disastrous wedding night. Brando struggles with a growing realisation of his dependence and helplessness and his face flares with the pained recognition that this is in no way the wedding night be imagined. Throughout much of the film he is desperate to cling to any chance of recovery – from imagining sensation in his legs to furious workouts to build his upper body strength to help him pretend he still has fully functioning limbs. It’s a fabulous performance, a slice of realism and humanity, underplayed with an everyday casualness.

It does mean Teresa Wright at times looks a little more actorly as Ellen. To be fair to Wright, her part is saddled with the most conventional plot arcs and scenes, of romantic devotion mixed with sudden doubts. (It’s not helped by Dimitri Tiomkin’s overly emphatic themes for her character, that do their best to do all the work for the audience). Her scenes tend to have the air of the infomercial about them, as Ellen debates disabilities with Dr Brock and her doubting parents. Foreman’s dialogue also tends to lean a little too much into “I’ll love you Ken, no matter what” territory.

The Men is at its weakest when it looks at societal integration. For all the quality of Brando and the low-key sensitivity of Zinnemann’s direction, this ends up being a lighter, less impactful version of Wyler’s astounding The Best Years of Our Lives. Brando plays a combination of Dana Andrews’ and Harold Russell’s characters from that film, but The Men never hits the same heights of universal experience and pain as that film does. (Teresa Wright basically plays the same role here as she did opposite Dana Andrews). It’s just a little too low-key, a bit too documentary.

When away from the medical, there is a lack of inspiration and poetry from The Men. It gains a lot from Brando’s performance, but without him it would feel more like a Government infomercial. When it hits drama, for all its daring, it never manages to fully turn itself into something more than a traditional romance-against-the-odds. It has its heart in the right place, but it feels like a companion piece to better films than a classic in its own right.

Avatar (2009)

Cameron’s monster-hit is an exciting slide of traditional story-telling, that had less cultural impact than you might expect

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington (Jake Sully), Zoë Saldana (Neytiri), Stephen Lang (Colonel Miles Quaritch), Sigourney Weaver (Dr Grace Augustine), Michelle Rodriguez (Trudy Chacón), Giovanni Ribisi (Parker Selfridge), Joel David Moore (Dr Norm Spellman), CCH Pounder (Mo’at), Wes Studi (Eytukan), Laz Alonzo (Tsu-tey), Dileep Rao (Dr Max Patel)

Why is Avatar so easy to mock? It’s the second biggest box office hit ever (Cameron holds slots two and three with this and Titanic:only Avengers: Endgame grossed more). But its cultural impact feels wide but not deep. As FOUR more Avatar films start to arrive from 2022, the question remains: why has no-one really talked about Avatar since 2009?

Perhaps it’s because there isn’t really much new or unique in Avatar, beyond the magic of its visuals and the magnificent showmanship of Cameron. For all the striking blue design of the aliens, their story was too reminiscent of too many other things. The script lacked punch, distinctive lines and unique characters. There was little to quote and few truly original pivotal moments that could be embraced by our cultural memory. Narratively and structurally, it’s all a little too safe, predictable and conventional.

Avatar partly became a “must see” cinematic event, because it was the film that finally nailed 3D. Maybe it is the best 3D film ever made. I don’t know, I’ve only ever seen it in 2D. To be very fair, Cameron doesn’t fill the film with crappy shots of things pointing at the camera. Instead, concentrating on telling a cracking (if predictable) story and filling the screen with beautiful, imaginative imagery that works in any dimension.

Avatar’s imagery is so striking because it’s set on the magical alien world of Pandora. In 2154, with Earth’s resources depleted, mankind has struck out into the stars – and Pandora is a rich seam of an insanely valuable mineral called unobtanium (chuckles presumably intended). Pandora is a carefully balanced biosphere, peopled by exotic animals and 10-foot, blue-skinned natives called the Na’vi. Pandora’s atmosphere is poisonous to humans, so scientists – led by Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) – use Na’vi “avatars”, operated by genetically matched humans, to explore. The mission is carefully balanced between science and financial exploitation by a sinister corporation, backed by mercenary army, led by the fanatical Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang).

Into this magical set-up drops paraplegic ex-marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), taking the place of his dead scientist brother because he is a genetic match for a freshly grown Na’vi avatar. With this warrior background, Jake is welcomed by the Na’vi, becoming an ambassador to the people. But Jake’s loyalties split as he finds a purpose in Na’vi life he has long since lost on Earth – and as he falls in love with Na’vi warrior Neytiri (Zoë Saldana). When the company decide to destroy the Na’vi’s home to gain access to the rich unobtanium deposits beneath, which side will Jake back?

It’s not hard to guess. At heart, Avatar fits very neatly into a series of Dances with Wolves-esque films, in which a wounded and lost (white) soldier finds a spiritual peace and solace with a native people, eventually rising up to fight for their rights against his own people. Avatar also finds roots in The Mission, with the scientists as the missionaries fighting alongside the natives (although with much better results), the conclusion of Return of the Jedi and Cruise’s The Last Samurai. Not to mention more than a few stylistic and plot echoes from Cameron’s own Aliens (you can even hear them at several points in Horner’s score), from technology (those stomping war suits) and cocky marines lost in a world they don’t understand (except this time, we love to see them killed off).

Avatar doesn’t challenge you, presenting its humble message of environmentalism and peaceful co-existence within a familiar framework where military forces and corporations are very bad and enlightened missionaries and Indigenous people are good. It entertains because it’s told with such skill. Cameron, while never the greatest screenwriter in the world, knows how to marshal his clichés and standard narrative tricks into something exciting and involving.

It also helps that the stock characters he creates a played with such forceful engagement by the actors. Stephen Lang is a growlingly hateable racist, delighting in the prospect of genocide, while Giovanni Ribisi’s corporate boss is a snivelling opportunist who couldn’t care less about the impacts of his actions. Opposite them, Sigourney Weaver gives huge weight to a fairly standard irritated-boss-turned-mentor role as the head scientist, Sully’s bridge to learning the Na’vi way. As Sully, Sam Worthington is not the most charismatic performer but he has an earnest intensity and emotional honesty that helps us invest in his pre-Pandora misery and his growing love of his adopted home.

Cameron’s greatest achievement though is the vision he creates for the Na’vi. All are played by actors using cutting-edge (and still impressive now) motion capture. Cameron builds a whole world for these people: a language, belief system, culture and bond with the environment. Sure, it’s heavily inspired by Indigenous American culture, but it feels real. Its bought to the screen with grace and tenderness and gains a huge amount from Zoë Saldana’s committed and emotionally open performance as Neytiri. Cameron so successfully builds a bond between audience and the Na’vi that you feel your heart wrench to see mankind tear their beautiful world apart.

It’s that emotional connection Cameron successfully builds that helps make the film work. After all we’ve all seen effects stuffed films before, but they don’t all become monster hits. And if the film was a dog, all the 3D magic in the world wouldn’t have helped. Few directors have as much skill with threading emotional bonds within the epic as Cameron. He shoots Avatar with a stunning majesty, carefully placed shots and graceful, almost traditional, editing help to build a sense of magic and wonder around the awe-inspiring alien vista. Avatar has a lot of action, but it never feels like just an action film: it’s a relationship drama, inspired by the beauty of its setting, with action in it.

More people have mocked Avatar with comparisons to the visually and thematically similar Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest than have actually seen Fern Gully. Narratively it does little new or unique and offers very little surprises. But its visuals are stunning and Cameron’s superb direction knows how to engage you. Clichés last because they carry a sort of truth: Avatar uses these truths to help you invest in a gripping, if conventional, story. But it’s also why its impact over time has been so slight – there aren’t any new ideas for viewers to tie themselves to and almost nothing that stands out as a unique cultural reference point – even if the conventional plot helped make it a short-term monster hit. But it’s also why it still makes for enjoyable rewatching.