{"id":5965,"date":"2010-10-15T16:08:12","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T20:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5965"},"modified":"2010-12-18T16:28:27","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T20:28:27","slug":"really-i%e2%80%99m-fine-with-you-watering-it-down-part-i-127-hours-and-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5965","title":{"rendered":"Really, I\u2019m fine with you watering it down: Part I: 127 Hours and Conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If, according to screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride<\/em>, All the President\u2019s Men<\/em>), \u201cIn Hollywood, nobody knows anything,\u201d then why is there always the need to taper off the intensity (read: effectiveness) of a movie in order to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience? Marketing is admittedly guesswork, and with the right evidence, you can prove that an R rated movie can make just as much as a PG-13. All three Matrix<\/span><\/a> <\/em>films are rated R, and feature no particularly offensive material, and yet they grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide. And those are fantasy films with no reality intruding whatsoever. In my talk with Going the Distance<\/em> screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe<\/span><\/a>, he admitted that his mean, nasty, and funny script was toned down, turning the main character played by Justin Long from a knowing asshole to a clumsy idiot. And boy did that concession work for the film in terms of being a financial juggernaut<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s even stranger when a film\u2019s subject matter already limits its appeal to a wide audience. This is true of Danny Boyle\u2019s 127 Hours<\/em> and Tony Goldwyn\u2019s Conviction<\/em>, both of which are based on a true story, but eliminate a lot of the details that differentiated them in the first place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Boyle\u2019s film is about Aron Ralston (played by James Franco), an X Games style mountain climber and overall outdoors extraordinaire, who gets stuck underneath a rock while recklessly scaling a mountain. Since he\u2019s in the middle of Nowhere, Utah, his only way to survive is to slowly cut off his own arm, just as he\u2019s running out of supplies. Now, considering the movie is based on Ralston\u2019s book, you can probably guess whether or not he got out alive, but because it\u2019s pretty faithful to the book (in an interview I was part of<\/span><\/a>, Boyle said there were only two very minor changes in the film) as much, it lacks objectivity<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

From what we see, Ralston\u2019s kind of a simplistic guy, and since after an early excursion with a pair of attractive backpackers (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn*), he\u2019s the only one we spend time with, and in one single set at that, this can get pretty tiresome. What do we learn about him in 90 minutes? He misses his ex-girlfriend and he wants to say goodbye to his parents, though he misses the point that his perpetual aloofness seems to have caused all the problems with his life, including his chutzpah in thinking he could scale this particular rock.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As a result, Boyle (Trainspotting<\/em>, Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later)<\/em> has to fill up 127 Hours<\/em> with his usual visual pyrotechnics that have worked so well for him in the past. There are triptychs showing us city life and music pumping up the excitement of being amongst all those people, its pro-industrialization message makes the film sort of an anti-Koyaanisqatsi<\/em>. And really, I don\u2019t blame Boyle for going this route; the scenes where he has to spruce up Ralston trapped by the boulder (it looks like he\u2019s humping the rock while admiring himself in a mirror) don\u2019t get interesting until he starts to hallucinate. Flashbacks and flash forwards are endless and tiresome (as is the closed shutter Gladiator<\/em>-style photography), and Boyle\u2019s dedication to the source material means he can\u2019t give us any wrinkles that Ralston didn\u2019t notice himself.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no real subtext going on, except Boyle\u2019s unintentional message that weaves its way through most of his movies (especially The Beach<\/em> and Trainspotting<\/em>) where it turns out that only conformity will save you, and individualism will get you punished. Granted the benchmarks for the lost in the mountains or trapped in a cave movies, Billy Wilder\u2019s Ace in the Hole<\/em> and Gus Van Sant\u2019s Gerry<\/em>, are rife with satire and sharp humor, something that Ralston doesn\u2019t appear capable of. [There\u2019s an unfortunate use of a song by Dido where the chorus is, \u201cIf I believe there\u2019s more than this.\u201d Nope.]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Since Boyle had to fill the frame with as many details as possible to pad out the film (the material might work better as a stage play, so we can have a real <\/em>interior monologue), it\u2019s a shame that he admittedly worried about audience squeamishness and felt the need to compromise based on how much he thought the audience could handle in terms of gore (and piss drinking, \u201cit\u2019s no Slurpee\u201d), because there\u2019s this constant feeling that the movie is about to get much more intense, and it simply never happens. Yes, the subject is inherently limited, and I wasn\u2019t expecting the arrival of Nazis or Panamanian rebels for Aron to fight off (though Steven Seagal could have made a cameo and helped Aron out, he\u2019s the go-to guy when you need one of your bones broken), but, and this is apparently directly from the novel, Aron is only in visible pain from the initial fall and arm crushing, never after, until he digs at his arm days later. Obviously, Ralston subconsciously wants us to believe that he\u2019s a tough, resourceful guy, but that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019d think he was a pussy because he expressed more than minor discomfort. Honesty is more interesting anyway.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Tony Goldwyn\u2019s Conviction<\/em> suffers from an even greater lack of honesty and a need to make sure the audience is always comfortable with the material. Why that was deemed necessary when the story is about an uneducated New England woman, Betty Ann Waters (Hilary Swank) who goes to law school to become a lawyer just to free her white trashy brother, Kenny (Sam Rockwell), from prison because she believes he\u2019s innocent, is obviously not going to appeal to small children. But that feeling that the director even knows what he\u2019s doing completely dissipates after 20 minutes, once we get into the ill-conceived flashbacks about how protective Kenny was of Betty Ann when they were children and going from foster home to foster home.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The flashback scenes introduce a theme that seems completely unintentional (and not just because the time-line is not often made clear causing a bunch of confusing details), and that\u2019s that Kenny and Betty Ann have a strange incestuous thing going on. This is made more obvious because Betty Ann can\u2019t even handle the notion that Kenny might be guilty of the murder, lashing out at and ex-communicating anyone who even suggests it, even though there\u2019s no crucial bit of evidence that immediately comes up that would convince her that he\u2019s innocent. It isn\u2019t until years later when Betty Ann discovers that DNA could free him, since there wasn\u2019t a court-admissible technology available when Kenny was convicted in 1983.<\/p>\n

Now, just like 127 Hours<\/em>, the ending should be clear to anyone even familiar with a courtroom drama (why would they make a movie about her if she couldn\u2019t<\/em> get him out?), but the simplification of the material is the frustrating part. The feminist cop is out to get Kenny because he was rude to her. The DA (Martha Coakely) won\u2019t admit new evidence because she doesn\u2019t want to re-open one of her defining cases. Kenny\u2019s ex-lover (Juliette Lewis) frames him because she\u2019s scared, but mostly she\u2019s dirty, nasty trash. And on the other side of the female symmetrical pyramid Betty Ann is kind, wonderful and devoted to her brother and her kids. Her best friend played by Minnie Driver is endlessly patient and willing to take the brunt of Betty Ann\u2019s frustration. The kindly old woman who works at the county clerk\u2019s office is willing to dig through mountains and years of evidence, more than once, just to help Betty Ann.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In a way, since Conviction<\/em> presents the female characters as front and center, it makes the film unique. But the movie seems to ignore that the real turning points are based on what the men do and the woman are mostly bystanders. Kenny committed the crime, but Rockwell doesn\u2019t have much to do besides hick it up and be a jovial guy with a short fuse who loves his daughter. Betty Ann\u2019s husband leaves her because she\u2019s obsessed with the case, and her kids (who seem to be 13 years old for about 10 years) side with dad because she never pays attention to them. And Barry Scheck (a super-nebbish in real life, played, in a spectacular bit of miscasting, by Mr. Eyebrows, Peter Gallagher) is the one who really gets the case going because he was the one running \u201cThe Innocence Project\u201d which freed wrongly convicted prisoners because of DNA evidence; he used his substantial media connections to shed light on Kenny\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The real Betty Ann and Kenny Waters <\/p><\/div>\n

But all that wouldn\u2019t matter if the movie were effective dramatically, instead of being histrionic, melodramatic, heavy-handed, and with no self-awareness at all. My first reaction to Hilary Swank\u2019s performance was that it was broad, ridiculous, and mired in clich\u00e9d New Englandisms, especially with the accent. But then I met<\/span><\/a> the real Betty Ann Waters (who was doing a press tour with Rockwell and Goldwyn) and realized the accent is just right and Betty Ann probably was<\/em> a broad, ridiculous mess. On the other hand, Rockwell\u2019s performance seems pretty lazy, throwing in dramatically convenient rage. His scenes appear pre-programmed, he either has to be excited or suicidal. Fine, his actions are compressed because it takes place over a period of 18 years (though Rockwell looks nothing like the real Kenny<\/span><\/a> at any time in his life), but it outlines the lack of gray area in every element of Conviction<\/em>. Goldwyn even nixes the most painfully ironic fact, that Kenny died 6 months after he got out because he fell from a 15-foot wall while he was taking a shortcut to his brother’s house. In the interview<\/span><\/a>, Goldwyn admitted this was because it was simply too much dramatically for the audience to handle (it\u2019s even eliminated from the final bits of information typed out before the closing credits). I don\u2019t know, I think I\u2019d rather have cruel irony than no irony at all.<\/p>\n

* Their scenes are not well written, he\u2019s clearly flirting with them for hours and yet one of them says, as he\u2019s leaving as to whether he\u2019ll think about them later that \u201cI don\u2019t think we even figure into his day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both of these films were screened as preparation for the Philadelphia Film Festival which runs Oct 14-24th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Part II can be read here:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If, according to screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride, All the President\u2019s Men), \u201cIn Hollywood, nobody knows anything,\u201d then why is there always the need to taper off the intensity (read: effectiveness) of a movie in order to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience? Marketing is admittedly guesswork, and with the right evidence, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4883,6878,7245,7239,7257,7240,7251,7246,6868,40,7238,7254,1708,7249,3868,6987,4168,437,5268,1232,7256,7248,2241,4148,638,3436,1493,7253,3406,7243,3945,7250,140,3516,4993,227,422,310,7258,49,1887,7255,528,7154,7252,459,2136,7244,7241,1902,781,7247,3414,2181,7242,289],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}