Year-End Cramming, #1 (Patreon)

Yes, yes, it's that time again. Final grades are finally submitted, the lights are up along the eaves and in the yard (see above), and it's a mad dash to the end of the year, trying to jam three festivals' worth of Serious Viewing into a couple of weeks. As long-time subscribers know, this means my write-ups are mercifully brief, unless I see something that strikes me as particularly interesting. Luckily, I doubt anything will. So let's get to wassailing.

Perfect Days (Wim Wenders, 2023)

Undoubtedly a return to form, although given the past few decades that isn't saying a whole lot. Going to Japan seemed to remind Wenders of some of the elemental pleasures of his greatest films (to my mind, Paris, Texas and Kings of the Road): traveling, listening to rock and roll, and engaging in cyclical gestures. I very much enjoyed Perfect Days for its first half, when it really just consisted of Hirayama (an appropriately stoic Koji Yakusho) waking up, misting his plants, buying his coffee, and making his rounds. And while I certainly understand Richard Brody's Marxist objections regarding the fetishization of manual labor, I also think there is an entire tradition of Japanese aesthetic thought that supports Wenders' close examination of humble work as having a spiritual dimension. In fact, I was surprised by how many interstitial moments reminded me of Naomi Kawase.

Alas, Wenders and co-writer Takuma Takasaki are not content with this modest fable of Shinto urbanism, and start introducing back-story and emotional complications. And while I guess I'm grateful that Perfect Days kept the specifics of Hirayama's past unspoken, the second half of the film exemplifies Brody's argument. From a Western perspective, a person could only embrace this ascetic, janitorial existence if they were hiding from a traumatic past. Perfect Days really only needed one other character, Hirayama's niece Niko (Arisa Nakano), because she accepted her uncle's life while providing an outside perspective. Everything else -- especially Hirayama's goofy co-worker Takashi (Tokio Emoto -- 1 out of 10!) -- just broke the spell. Wenders is back, but he still has a ways to go.

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

I forget where I saw someone compare Oppenheimer to mid-period Oliver Stone, but it's an idea that takes us only so far. Granted, I prefer Nolan's chilly British precision to Stone's pot-addled paranoia. But like JFK and especially Nixon, Oppenheimer stages history not as pageant but as whirlwind, with events and choices evolving so quickly that the characters and the viewer perceive the inexorability of things already done. And of course, Oppenheimer is a story that lends itself to many Great Man supporting roles played by a bevy of high-profile supporting actors. The fact that this film works more often than it doesn't is a testament not only to Nolan's technical skill, but the fact that this unusual biopic dovetails nicely with the director's philosophical interests. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) can only achieve historical status by . . . not "selling his soul," exactly, but making the move from theory to practice, which always entails getting more than chalk on one's hands.

And it's interesting that a story with a factual basis finds Nolan engaging in some of his most casually striking visual invention. Compared with the bombast of Inception or the Batman films, having Oppy screwing Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) in a conference room in front of his wife (Emily Blunt), or giving his victory speech at Los Alamos while imagining the human mutilation of the atomic bomb, represent uncharacteristic shards of psychological interiority. This is preferable to having Murphy glower and wring his hands, or simply convey nothing. All that said, there's no reason for Oppenheimer to be three hours long, and not because there's anything wrong with epic running times per se. When the trial-that's-not-a-trial takes over in the third hour, and Nolan attempts to turn a bitter Cold War civil servant (Robert Downey, Jr.) into a master villain, it's not only dull. It undercuts two hours of genuinely exciting commercial filmmaking.

The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)

Godard famously said "the way to criticize a film is to make another film," and boy howdy, did Alexander Payne take that notion to heart. By the time he offered us a needle drop of Cat Stevens' "The Wind," there was no point denying it anymore. The Holdovers is Payne's race- and class-conscious takedown of Rushmore, and possibly Wes World in general. From the opening moments, when we see snow being shoveled off the sidewalk of an elite Eastern prep school, The Holdovers is setting the viewer up for a carefully orchestrated shift. This "invisible" Black maintenance employee is actually a significant character, Danny (Naheem Garcia), who plays a role in helping Mary (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) start healing from unspeakable tragedy.

And in fact, Payne speaks the tragedy loud and clear. Mary's son attended Barton, the prep school, on scholarship, but his mother couldn't afford to send him to college. So he was drafted and died in Vietnam. While we could, and probably should, take issue with the fact that Mary is there in part to help Angus (Dominic Sessa), the depressive, wayward student, learn certain life lessons, at least he learns them, and has his own family challenges as well. This is something we certainly can't say about Max Fischer, a character Anderson loved so much that he was incapable of showing him for what he was: entitled white mediocrity. The respective film's choice of curmudgeon also speaks volumes. In Rushmore, Bill Murray was a self-made man. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), by contrast, pursued academia as a way out, thinking that meritocracy would save him, only to discover just how absolutely rigged the game has always been. Where Rushmore (a film I do like) is a patrician fantasy about flouting the rules, The Holdovers is the story of people stuck in the penumbra of privilege, left to fend for themselves.