Geeta Patel and Ravi Patel | Meet the Patels / 2015

the matchmaker’s son

by Douglas Messerli

 

Matthew Hamachek, Billy McMillin, Geeta Patel and Ravi Patel (screenwriters), Geeta Patel and Ravi Patel (directors) Meet the Patels / 2015    

 

What to do if you’re a 30-year-old American and East Indian ancestry, with a father anxious to see you married and a mother known for her matchmaking arts? You give in, naturally, and, after traveling to India to meet dozens of your women who share your last name—in this case Patel—you travel throughout the US and Canada on one long series of dates with women whom your parents have chosen based on education, skin-color (wheatish, apparently is the preferred color) and—if you are a young actor with a filmmaking sister—you document the endless search!

 

     If this all sounds like a kind nightmarish version of Four Weddings and a Funeral, take heart. Despite some teeth-grating moments, particularly when hero arrives in the small Indian hometown of his parents in Gujarat, where everyone is a kind of “relative”—with all of them insisting it is time for Ravi to tie the knot—the dozens of speed-dating encounters that follow are not at the center of this charming film. What we discover, instead, is that even a pair of anxious, interfering and often dominating parents such as Champa V and Vasant K. Patel, are charming, funny, loving folk who have brought up their talented children, Geeta and Ravi, with love and near endless patience, while still maintaining a deep love for one another. If the Patel parents may be one of the most intrusive on the planet, they are still very loving folk, and are born comedians.

      To most contemporary Americans, the very idea of an arranged marriage seems distasteful. But then, most marriages are, in some small manner, arranged affairs: most couples meet because they live in the same city, have gone through similar educational experiences, and share ideals and values. As many exceptions as there are to these patterns, we basically rely mostly on the “arrangements” we have made with our lives, even if we often ignore the advice our elders in choosing a life-time companion. At least in the Indian ideal, the parents have some reliable information in the form of a sort of idealized resume which describe as “bio-data.” Besides, the actual process of falling in love is still up the couple themselves, and it appears that, despite the joyfully long marriage of their parents, the beautiful Geeta and affable Ravi are having a difficult time of committing to others. At least, on screen.

 

     Before the film has begun, however, it increasingly becomes apparent that Ravi has found the girl for him, a beautiful, red-head, well-bred Connecticut woman, named Audrey. The only problem is that he hasn’t bothered to discuss it with his parents, and apparently still, himself, believes that it’s preferable to marry a woman of Indian descent. In fact, the biggest problems for this family are their own sometimes not so hidden racial distinctions and inbred familial attitudes.

      As time passes, and date after date falls flat, Geeta begins querying her sibling about the girl with whom he has broken up—and yet still occasionally is still “seeing.” It finally begins to come to a boil when Audrey herself finally lays down some rules: she can no longer see Ravi if there’s no possibility of sharing her life with on a permanent basis.

 

     When Ravi finally reveals to mom and dad that he has been seeing a girl who he truly loves, it is the father who is more accepting, convinced that his angry wife, Champa, will eventually come around. Yet she seems determined in her anger, and it is only when she and her son sit for a serious talk, that she reveals her anger is centered on his not having honest with her; she is not insistent that he marry only someone within his race. And the last few scenes show the obviously good cook explaining to Audrey—who Ravi had to plead long and hard to return to him—how to make the family’s favorite foods.

     Now, if only Geeta….we’ll have to wait until Meet the Patels II comes out, as it well may someday. Surely, Vasant might be hired as the publicist the next time around. Reportedly, in the many venues in which this charming film first premiered, he called up all the Patels in each city, inviting them to attend the event. Lines formed around the blocks. Even in the Sundance Theater in Los Angeles where I saw this film with my companion Howard, the house was packed with Indians! But then, the actor and his sister apparently live nearby, so I was glad to have been able to have met our neighbors.

 

Los Angeles, September 2015

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2015).

Shawn Ryan | Charlie / 2015

christmas miracles

by Douglas Messerli

 

Shawn Ryan (screenwriter and director) Charlie / 2015 [22 minutes]

 

Charlie is a delightful satire on two stereotypes of American family life.

     The seemingly autistic Charlie (Shawn Ryan)—he might be described as hysterically mute— begins this film by riding in the backseat with his mother and step-father in a car headed on a Christmas visit to his uncle’s, his constantly complaining mother Rose Tipton (Andrea Marcovicci)) and her almost entirely silenced husband, Keith (Chris Connor)—evidently her second go-round since Charlie calls him by his first name—in the front.

       Most of her hostility is directed at her son Charlie, who refuses to answer her, let alone engage with the fact that at his age—clearly not as young as he superficially seems—has had a college education but still found no employment. Never mind that as early as 2015, most students, his age had come to realize that having a degree meant little in the work force, a fact that never might have satisfied the bill-paying parents—and presumably, why should it?

     Rose, however, is a kind of monster who no one, Keith included, can stop from berating her favorite victim. She insists, once they arrive at their destination that he talk to his cousin Mark. “Here’s very bright Charlie. Do you know he started his own company in Silicon Valley?” Mark hires bright people for his company, and Rose is insistent that Charlie be nice to him so that she can get back her $184,000 she invested. Thank heaven for the dean who helped her from paying for an 8th year. “Do you think he graduated on his own?”

     Charlie asks Keith to pull over. He’s going to be sick, an obvious digestive reaction to the venom Rose has been pouring into him. He quickly vomits and then, as Rose continues her diatribe (“I told you Charlies not read that book in the car!”), Charlie continues to climb down the mountain into the valley below, as Keith finally reacts to Rose’s vehemence, the two falling into their own verbal battle.

      Finally, realizing they can no longer see him, Keith attempts to phone the missing boy, but realizes he’s not picking up as Rose screams over the cellphone, “Charlie, where the hell have you been?” the boy tossing away his only connection left with his brutalizing mother.

       Only a few frames later Charlie has stumbled into the white picket fence of the Sanderson family, the perfectly loving American family we’ve all heard about and dreamt of being born into. Amanda (Nancy Kimball), a youngish girl, watches him arrive into their front yard and waves hello to him just before the collapses.

     And by the next scene, he finds himself on the couch as Janet Sanderson (Mo Collins) and her husband Max (Jim O’Heir) greet him as their Christmas angel, their young son Walter (Nick Cassidy) carefully watching over the awakening body.

      If Charlie has been primarily mute previously, he now seems to have completely lost his tongue, as he smiles and simply mines his way through their more than friendly reactions to his presence. Max, the son, insists that he can’t speak.

      The Sanderson’s quickly adjust to the situation, planning for a big dinner, midnight mass and gifts in the morning, almost without a beat bringing Charlie into their loving circle.

      In fact, a bit like the angelic figure of Pasolini’s Teorema (1968), Charlie represents some joy for each of the family members. For the adults he clearly represents a perfect addition to their little family. To Amanada he is an older brother to who she can confide. For Walter …we’ll get back to that.

      Janet cuts Charlie’s hair, explaining they’re not really religious, but they’re in the habit of “always doing the right thing,” and they’ve grown accustomed to midnight mass. To Janet Charlies seems like “the grad school type, just so smart.” She’s only gone to cosmetology school. But “I love what I do,” she adds. “I think that’s all that one can ever strive for in life. I love my kids. I love Max. Why complain?” Her gift is a moisturizer that she bought for herself, but she wants him to be the first one to use it.

     In the bathroom Charlie completely shaves on his beard, looking far better than he previously did, looking like a new person.

      Walter brings him a borrowed shirt from his father and gifts him with a pair of newly purchased underwear his mother has bought him as well as a pair of pants. As the two dress and undress sitting on the bed, he also gives him an unexpected kiss, which Charlie not only is perfectly happy to receive but reciprocates, the two falling into a loving embrace that quickly turns into something far more sexual. When Janet, bringing them some tea or coffee, quietly opens the door she spots the two, closes the door silently and, after a second or two, smiles in delight that her son has finally found someone he likes.

       After a few minutes, Walter rises, apologizing for his sudden demonstration of affection. But Charlie simply kisses him again, cementing their relationship with a hug.

       Amanada, talking to him on the front lawn wonders if he can’t talk or he won’t, her young mind probing into the situation of her new “brother.” “You can talk and just choose not to? Wow. Brave.” Her gentleness and acceptance brings Charlie to tears as he begins to sob openly, she holding hand to comfort him for the pain and sorrow he has so long held within. Her Christmas gift to Charlie is obviously understanding and sympathy, something he’s rarely encountered in his life.

 

     Soon after, we see the family returning from the Christmas mass, laughing since Max spent the entire ceremony asleep. “The best hour of sleep I’ve had in years.”

       The family retires for the night, Walter and Charlie joyfully sharing a bed.

     In the morning, as the others open their simple presents from one another, Max hands a special package to Charlie, a pocket watch belonging to his grandfather Charles, “an incredibly brave man.” The watch is inscribed with the words, “To Charles, the bravest man I know.” The recipient is so overwhelmed that he opens his mouth to speak as the film goes black.

       We want to warn him that perhaps it might be better to remain silent. But we also feel that with this family, even if he later tells them what he has gone through and his personal failures, he will be always welcome. He has been given a new life, found a new family, a new home—the one we all, as children and young men and women imagine we truly belonged to instead of the one into which we were born.

 

Los Angeles, May 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).

     

Alfred Hitchcock | I Confess! / 1953

too many confessions

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Tabori and William Archibald (screenplay, based on a play by Paul Anthelme), Alfred Hitchcock (director) I Confess! / 1953

 

Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess!—which I saw again yesterday, many years after first seeing it— I realized this time through, is a film not only about one man’s confession, but demands the confessions of nearly every figure in the film, save the central character.

      Beginning with a sort of tongue-in-cheek series of clues about who is pulling the strings of this would-be murder mystery, the director repeatedly offers up signs referring drivers which way to maneuver their cars through the old quarter of Quebec: each declaring “direction.” This is immediately followed by an image of the Hitchcock, himself, crossing a bridge at the top of the screen. In short, the director comes clear—one is tempted to say “confesses”—from the very beginning of his tale that he is not only in control of his cinematic “puppets,” but will manipulate them and his story, just as they attempt to manipulate one another.

      Although the film first suggests it might be a noir, displaying a dead body, followed by what appears to be a priest walking through the darkened narrow streets, followed by two young school-girls (who also later testify), the director immediately shifts gears, as the man (Otto Keller, we soon discover), by removing his cassock, makes it clear that he is the murderer and that he is no priest. 

      Entering a nearby cathedral, he demands the priest—for whom, it quickly becomes apparent, he also works for Father Logan (Montgomery Clift)—hear his confession, proceeding to wipe away any of the plot’s mystery by admitting that he has just murdered the lawyer, Villette, upon being discovered attempting to steal his money.

  

    The fact that he does confess, is absolved, and claims he had sought the money so that his wife will no longer have to work, also helps to make the audience somewhat forgive him, particularly, when, soon after, the story reveals that Villette was a vile man, guilty of tax fraud, who had attempted to blackmail the heroine of our tale, Madame Grandfort (Anne Baxter).

      However, when we observe Father Logan, himself, visiting Villette’s house soon after the body’s discovery (deceptively “found” by Keller, who also works as a gardener for the lawyer) it temporarily arouses our curiosity about his involvement, particularly when he meets Madame Grandfort on the street in front of the house soon after, announcing that since Villette has died she is now “free.”

      But as quickly as Hitchcock has suggested that the priest and married woman may be having an affair, that fact is laid to rest as Grandfort, herself, confesses to her husband and, soon after, reveals the true nature of her relationship with the priest at the request of the police inspector Larrue (Karl Malden). By the time she finishes her “confession” we know nearly the entire story of her long ago love for the priest before he had become ordained and we learn about the night they spent in a gazebo (apparently without having sex), after being caught in sudden rainstorm. By coincidence, the country house also belongs to Villette who, encountering the two and recognizing Madame Grandfort (her husband is a major government leader), greets her as Madame, revealing to her former boyfriend that she is now married.

      However, when we observe Father Logan, himself, visiting Villette’s house soon after the body’s discovery (deceptively “found” by Keller, who also works as a gardener for the lawyer) it temporarily arouses our curiosity about his involvement, particularly when he meets Madame Grandfort on the street in front of the house soon after, announcing that since Villette has died she is now “free.” 

     The director, accordingly, quite obviously moves his story in several different directions, just as he has done in the first scene, piling on confession after confession which keeps altering the course of his tale while simultaneously deflating any elements of mystery his film might still possess and pointing to the guilt of the most innocent character in his film. Quite the opposite of what happens in most murder mysteries, in I Confess! everyone confesses, which causes greater confusion than if no one were to say anything.

    Finally, we are left with only one plot question: will the priest be found guilty simply because he is the only character who cannot confess since is bound to the confidentiality of the confession box? But even here Hitchcock pulls the rug out from under what we might have expected of the story by having his “tortured” innocent character declared “not guilty!”

    Yet Logan has been found guilty by the public at large, and it is their harassment of him upon leaving the courthouse that leads Keller’s wife, Alma (Dolly Hass) to provide yet another confession as she attempts to tell the police of Keller’s guilt. Her husband kills her, but in so doing he—this time unintentionally—“confesses” yet again, drawing the police into a chase which finally ends in his death.       

    In the original play, Father Logan and Madame Grandfort not only had an affair, but an illegitimate child, and by play’s end Father Logan was executed. But both local censors and the Warner Brothers studio heads thought it was too controversial, forcing Hitchcock to change the story. 

     Frankly, in this case, I feel that the conventionality of their decision works much better. The irony of the situation, that it is an innocent man who cannot tell his version of the truth, makes for a much stronger moral dilemma; and the fact that Logan survives the impossible bind, only further demonstrates his existential condition, wherein he cannot morally act given the necessary silence of his role in the church. Certainly, Hitchcock realized that for many Protestants, the Roman Catholic priest’s silence might be difficult to explain, and even wrote a note attempting to explain the position of the church in which he had grown up.

     Hitchcock’s focus on the handsome Clift’s dark, deep-set eyes—through which he centrally expresses his reactions to the dilemma his character faces—and his close-ups of the actor’s so sensuous lips, helps to represent the character as a figure emotionally bottled up in silence. It is probable that the director also knew of the actor’s own silence regarding his homosexuality, which certainly may have contributed to Clift’s intensity, seemingly further isolating him from all those constantly talking, confessing beings surrounding him. Clift was the perfect outsider to whom everyone felt comfortable confessing, while about himself he would seldom, and in Hollywood could not, speak.

 

Los Angeles, January 30, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2016).

Richard Brooks | Elmer Gantry / 1960

another opening, another show

by Douglas Messerli

 

Richard Brooks (screenplay, based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis and director) Elmer Gantry / 1960

 

Based partly on Sinclair Lewis sprawling denunciation of revivalist religions, Richard Brooks film, Elmer Gantry tries to have its religion and mock it too—and almost succeeds in creating a confection that looks good enough to eat.

 

    Yes, Gantry (brilliantly performed by Burt Lancaster) is a lying scoundrel who sees religion as a better way to make a living than his previous career as a salesman. But he’s such a handsome, smiling charmer, that you can’t blame anyone, female or male, for falling for him. The saintly self-deluded Sister Sharon Falconer (a character based on Pentecostalist Aimee Semple McPherson), played by Jean Simmons, has little resistance when it comes to Gantry, not only allowing him to pair up as a hell-and-damnation warm-up speaker to her more gentle calls for spiritual salvation, but to join her in the sack. And even the cynical newspaperman, Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), despite his newspaper revelations of Gantry’s sham, clearly admires the man. A former beau, Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones), who after Gantry abandoned her was forced into prostitution, is still in love with him enough to jealously seek revenge. Gantry is able even to sweet-talk the Zenith—Lewis’ mythical Midwestern city—preachers into allowing him to take his unconventional religious circus into their own territory.

 

    In fact, in Gantry’s encounter with the Babbitt’s and the reverends of that prosperous city, we perceive them to be greedier than he or Falconer is. At least the revivalists work hard for their money.

     Falconer seems convinced that she is truly battling for the souls of the townsfolk. And Gantry, while proselytizing through the closure of a whorehouse, still has the sensitivity, once he spots Lulu in the midst, to simply ask them to leave town instead of having them arrested. Later, he saves Lulu from a brutal beating with her pimp. By the end of this movie, indeed, after the fiery death of Falconer, the audience can only admire this man, much in the way we admire the sham salesman Harold Hill in another Midwestern tale, The Music Man. Gantry himself seems to have grown into a more respectable adulthood, giving up, as 1 Corinthians preaches, “childish things,” to, presumably, return to an honest life.

      Lancaster’s Gantry, if nothing else, has shown us a right good time in his childish behavior. But by painting his hero-villain with such pastel colors, we can only wonder, in the end, what Brooks’ film was all about. What were we supposed to think about his fling with faith? And what was all the fuss about? Why have the newspaperman trail him, and reveal and that Gantry and Falconer were, after all, just human folk?

     In short, by allowing him such a winning personality and a deep commitment to love (as Gantry quotes: “Love is the morning and the evening star.”) Brooks has eviscerated his story. By presenting Gantry as simply a failed human being in need of salvation, the director has removed the devil from his sin. Despite the preacher’s hissing declarations—“Sin, sin, sin! You're all sinners! You're all doomed to perdition.”—everyone in this film except the Zenith city leaders seem pretty ordinary and blameless.

 

     If we might have begun by imagining that this film would be a denunciation or even a satire of the revivalist tradition—a fascinating idea for a film that has yet to be made—we come out of this picture by being quite amused by the whole tradition, as if it were all a good joke. As a “clean-up man” muses, late in the film:

 

                   Mister, I've been converted five times. Billy Sunday,

                   Reverend Biederwolf, Gypsy Smith, and twice by

                   Sister Falconer. I get terrible drunk, and then I get

                   good and saved. Both of them done me a powerful

                   lot of good—gettin' drunk and gettin' saved. Well,

                   good night.

 

The only thing Brooks reveals is that the revival business is simply “another opening, another show.” Today it has even infected politics: take another look at that real sinner Donald Trump.

 

Los Angeles, March 10, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2016).

Werner Herzog | Grizzly Man / 2005

the kind warrior

by Douglas Messerli

 

Werner Herzog (screenwriter and director) Grizzly Man / 2005

 

A great many of Werner Herzog’s cinematic heroes are men of stunning contradictions (Fitzcarraldo, Kasper Hauser, Stroszek, and Woyzeck to name only a few), but none of them is more so than Timothy Treadwell, the focus of his 2005 documentary Grizzly Man.

       Treadwell saw himself as a protector of wildlife, particularly of the bears in Federal Alaskan parks, a “kind warrior,” as he put it, at one with the spirit of the wilderness. And for 13 years he lived among the wild giants, each of who he’d given a name, and friendly foxes, many of whom even submitted to his gentle petting. If nothing else, in his own mind, Treadwell was a true hero, teaching young children, in his off time for free, through the films he had made on the Alaskan Peninsula, about the wonders of his orsine neighbors. He particularly saw himself as a protector of them from poachers.

     Yet park officials maintain that there had been little if any poaching of the beasts, which were protected except for limited kills. Moreover, by living among them, Treadwell may, in fact, have inured the bears to human beings, and thereby endangering them and humans visiting the park. Although his films may have made his Grizzlies into a natural wonder, they also advertised the bears’ whereabouts, with gawkers and hunters following Treadwell’s tracks to the Grizzly maze.

       Although, on the surface, Treadwell seemed like a cute and likeable guy, who had found his cause and new meaning through the wonders of nature, he, nonetheless, had a troubled past, particularly with alcohol and drugs. Even from the descriptions of his friends and his own commentaries, it is quite apparent that Treadwell suffered from a bipolar disorder even if Herzog never makes that assumption.

     Although he had loyal women friends, Amie Huguenard and Jewel Palovak among them, Treadwell, it seems, was a bit of a misogynist, in one tape wishing that he were gay so that he could freely have one sexual encounter after another (as if that’s what most gay men desire); he laments having to “finesse” women.

      Although Herzog sees, in Treadwell’s numerous on-camera retakes and costume changes, evidence of a skillful documentarian—and given some of the beautiful scenes we are shown, it is clear that Treadwell was able to capture natural events that many more noted directors were unable to—these same scenes also reveal a highly narcissistic human being, a man increasingly moving away from the real world in order to live in his own imagined and even sentimentalized Eden.

     Indeed, his last trip back to the lower states, after encountering a rude airport agent, sent him back to Alaska, putting himself and his companion, Huguenard, into further danger by coming into contact with Grizzlies during the period in which they headed for hibernation and were necessarily trying to provide themselves with enough food to survive it. 

     The bear that finally killed Treadwell and Huguenard was a relative stranger to the area, and surely was less intrigued by the bear-lover’s existence than simply recognizing him and his companion as sources of sustenance. When the animal was later shot, there was evidence of four human bodies within its stomach (I wish we might have discovered who these “others” might have been; were they, like Treadwell, simply putting themselves in danger?).

 

    Of course, without Treadwell, we could not have experienced such thrills as watching arctic  foxes scampering through the landscape of the burly, lumbering giants, nor have witnessed a fight between two would-be Alpha male bears, wherein the elder fights off the younger’s challenges. And it is quite beautiful to observe Treadwell’s obvious love for the animals and landscape of the wild. We have the ominous sense, throughout, that even if the two had not been brutally eaten in 2003, that that year might have been Treadwell’s last. Throughout, the documentarian with the documentary warns himself and us of the dangers he daily encounters, part of his self-mystification, surely, but also clearly the truth. That he had survived for so many years is, as all those knowledgeable proclaim, more than a miracle.

      Such a figure of determined self-destruction, for anyone who has seen Herzog’s film, is just what most interests this director. His men (there are only a few women leads) live macho lives that go beyond the ordinary boundaries of human behavior. Herzog even uses himself, in this case, as a man willing to hear what one might describe as the “full” horrifying story as he listens, without allowing us to hear, the tape, now owned by Palovak, recorded during the bear attack. Although the camera does not look directly into Herzog’s face, we can perceive that the horrors he hears are enough to make a grown man cry. He tells Palovak, who not listened to the tape, to get rid of it before it becomes her “white elephant” in the room. Wisely, she puts them away in a vault.

      In the end, Herzog would have us see Treadwell as a kind of transformed “believer,” as a man who, after a near-death experience from drugs, was born again into an almost mystical relationship with nature. He wanted, so it’s suggested, to himself become a bear. In the Grizzly Treadwell found a new god.

     To give Herzog credit, he interviews a native Inuit scholar, whose own culture also idolized the bears, but who, unsentimentally, kept a far distance from them, recognizing their powers and dangers.

     Like many who embrace strange outsider religions, Treadwell’s embracement of the god-like bear ended in his and Anne Huguenard’s deaths—something which perhaps Treadwell himself subliminally desired, while yet urging Huguenard in the last moments (so we are told) to run, to abandon the faith. Although, given his comments about his “standing his ground” against the giants, perhaps her running away might simply have led the bear to chase her and leave him to suffer his wounds. Contradictions, regarding Treadwell, as I said, abound.

 

Los Angeles, April 14, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2016).