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Everybody Knows

Mar17

Movie Review by Joan Ellis –

Everybody Knows

Everybody Knows hands us a plot that is hard to follow but intriguing enough to hold us. Because there is no way to describe the plot details without ruining the suspense, let’s start with a short description of writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s family drama.

Laura (Penelope Cruz), who moved to Venezuela when she married, has come home to Spain for the wedding of her sister. With her are her teenage daughter Irene (Carla Campra) and her very much younger son. Her husband Alejandro (Ricardo Darin) remains in Venezuela looking for a job. The bearded middle-aged Paco (Javier Bardem), an old friend from long ago, is one of the guests.

Laura’s daughter Irene immediately locks eyes with a young man. When she leads him to play with risk in the clock tower, we know Irene is deeply driven by a streak of rebellion. Quite suddenly, during the wedding and the early scenes of the movie, she is kidnapped and the wedding itself turns into the scene for the whole complex plot.

We watch the relationships unfold while wondering whether the kidnapper is part of the assembled crowd. A sudden storm knocks out electricity and bathes the whole in candlelight. How can a murder mystery in candlelight be anything but fun?

As you watch the beauty of the wedding, the church and the guests, the question of who the kidnapper is takes second place. We know director Asghar Farhadi will give us that answer when he’s ready.

Against this grand portrait of a Spanish location, you have a scared mother, a missing daughter and the mother’s relationship with the wedding guests. All are delivered by good actors in a somewhat murky story script. Why does no one report the disappearance of young Irene to some authority? The only possibility is that this provides the backdrop for the revelations that are unfolding gradually. We can’t learn who the villain is too early. Irene’s disappearance offers us the time and tools to explore the relationships among the others. The wedding itself becomes a tool that gives us the feel and character of the church, the minister, the wedding, and the town. Toss in the crisis and an arriving husband, stir the plot, and we sit there enjoying the fine acting of the whole cast set in a beautiful place.

In addition to an odd plot, we face another problem common to today’s movies. The two bearded Spanish men look alike; the two sisters and Paco’s wife look alike. It’s too easy to excuse this as family resemblance. When a writer drops us into a crowded wedding in an unfamiliar country, he shouldn’t give us the added burden of casting a crowd of guests and principals who look alike. We forgive him because the pace is brisk and he gives us a good story full of actors who deliver the story so well that we’re glad we came – even if we can’t tell them apart.

Film Critic : Joan Ellis
Film Title : Everybody Knows
Word Count : 495
Running Time: 2:13
Rating : R
Date : March 3, 2019

Widows

Nov25

Movie Review by Joan Ellis –

Widows

It can easily be said that Widows is first rate on many levels. Director Steve McQueen and actor Viola Davis create a strong core for the movie as they and their cohorts break new ground for women in many ways. The movie has become a hot topic in long, favorable press articles that credit it with exploding the usual Hollywood guidelines regarding race, gender, sex, and murder. All true with one major reservation: is this an acceptable moment to have women celebrate their new freedom with guns and killing?

The movie opens with a prolonged love scene between Harry (Liam Neeson) and Veronica (Viola Davis) that establishes their passion. Shortly after that, Harry is killed during one of his criminal projects leaving his wife Veronica vulnerable to other crooks owed money by her newly dead husband. When she learns that Harry had hidden $5,000,000 in a now unknown place, she assembles several needy widows of fellow criminals to help find that bundle for splitting among themselves. All this will unfold in Chicago, the big city with its own deeply dark side. And so we have men, women, and a backdrop all involved in theft and killing.

Add to that one more first: the unpleasant fact that the moviemakers decided that in addition to breaking new ground for women they would show all crimes and murders in prolonged and full view of the carnage as it unfolds. We are treated to lingering shots of faces and bodies carved up and awash in blood.

The genuine misfire here is the choice of proving the equality of women to men in the one grim way that has usually been the prerogative of men: violence. Women have chosen alternative paths in the past and those ways are now gaining public acceptance. Let’s hope writers will begin to focus on some of the extraordinary ways they are now making themselves felt by solving problems in ways other than traditional male violence.

All that aside, performances by Michele Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki and Cynthia Ervio are fine and those by Viola Davis and Liam Neeson are so strong that they literally become the impact of the movie. I am not asking for old-fashioned feel good movies, but let’s hope someone will film the amazing breakout stories of the past couple of years – the MeToo movement in response to the school shootings, the rise of teenagers in fighting the violence their elders continue to ignore.

The glorification of violence as women’s path to equal strength with men is unpleasant and childish. Now that they are no longer housebound as they have been for centuries, let’s write and film stories that celebrate their new freedom to explore their skills. The relationship between Viola Davis and Liam Neeson is a good start in destroying old rules, but imagine the great story that could have followed if each of the featured women had bold ideas in their heads instead of guns in their hands.

Film Critic : Joan Ellis
Film Title : Widows
Word Count : 500
Running Time : 2:09
Rating : R
Date : November 25, 2018