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November 20, 2010
Stone (2010)
John Curran's Stone is most overtly notable for featuring a legitimately good performance from Robert DeNiro; he actually seems engaged by the material, which one can trace to the film's other primary tenet: it's got a head on it's shoulder, and there are interesting things ticking away inside it. That it's quietly come and gone from theaters in the past month is perhaps not surprising; likewise, Curran's filmmaking doesn't pack the sort of exceedingly graceful formalist punch that, say, James Gray's work does, which means it's not going to get many love letters from critics. But in so much as he (and screenwriter Angus MacLaughlan) try to imbue the narrative with a deeper sense of meaning, and that he boldly exercises the potential of his medium in order to do this, Stone is worth talking about.
And imbuing is indeed what he's doing, as opposed to circumventing, as Manohla Dargis suggested in her review. Beneath the boilerplate outline of the story is an ideological reservoir, one established not so much through dialogue as through a firm cinematic hand. There's a conscious decision to show certain things at certain points (the opening scene, for example), to use rich sound beds (including a score by Jon Brion, Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead, and Curran himself) to guide one's focus, to play with the conventions of the shot-reverse shot structure, to use montage to draw out a surprisingly metaphysical groundswell that is instigated as much by Curran as it is by the spiritual awakening of Edward Norton's titular convict. There's a murder scene in the middle of the film that succeeds in overcoming the horror of what it literally represents and succeeds in achieving that rare (and overly prescribed) mode: transcendence.
Does it all add up? I don't know - the exact degree to which spirituality literally affects the narrative is ultimately unclear, to the film's detriment. DeNiro's character completes his preordained character arc, and Norton's is meant to correspond, but there seems to be a missing beat. His character is driven by equal parts manipulation and sincere awakening, and the two make for an awkward sort of complexity; it's easy to take him seriously but hard to believe him, and his true perspective is missing in the final, mystifying moments of the film. I'm sure Curran could direct me towards what I'm missing, but regardless, the danger in being even a little bit wishy-washy with this sort of material is that one might be perceived as delving into pop spiritualism, which I don't think was Curran's intent; I'm reminded of another film that dealt with the nature of belief, Scott McGehee and David Siegel's all-but-forgotten Bee Season from 2005, which contained an hour of near-profundity but didn't quite stick its landing. I remember it for what it approximated, though, and I'll remember this one as well.
But to speak of sticking one's landing, I caught Danny Boyle's 127 Hours immediately after Stone. Boyle and James Franco have made of a grueling personal ordeal a rousing cowd-pleaser; the sense of satisfaction when Franco finally rids himself of that pesky limb cut fast and deep through the audience. It was practically a stand-up-and-cheer moment, and it was followed by a denouement scored to a Sigur Ros song, which is a surefire way to turn anything, especially an ending, into a rush of profound ebullience. The movie, for all of its seeming constrictions, frees itself of any real challenges by playing fast and loose with time and space, and I don't for a second hold that against it. It's a terrific time at the movies, and upon exiting the theater it made me consider my dedication to more heady cinema, and whether or not it wouldn't be better to just try to make people really happy. Then I walked past a poster for Tony Scott's Unstoppable (which I saw the previous weekend and, let me tell you, it was no Man On Fire) and figured I'd just keep trying to split the difference.
Posted by David Lowery at November 20, 2010 10:13 PM