Storytelling
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Movie Reviews of Storytelling
Movie Review: Stories Worth Telling!
Summary: 5 Stars
"Storytelling" is not one film, but two. They are both different, but very related. The first story is called "Fiction" and it stars Selma Blair, Leo Fitzpatrick, and Robert Wisdom. Selma Blair stars as Vi, a collage student who is taking a writing course with her boyfriend Marcus, who has celebral palsy. The class is taught by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Gary Scott. When Marcus's story is comments badly by Gary, he becomes nervous that Vi is interested in Gary when she does not stand up to him during the class. They break up, but when Vi goes to a bar she meets Gary, and she learns something about him, and her life is changed. The second and longer story is called "Nonfiction" and it stars Paul Giamatti, who already amazed me this year with "American Splendor" and he gives another great preformance as Tobey Oxford, a documentary filmmaker who is doing a documentary about high school students, and how it is hard to get into the collage of your choice. He finds his focus in Scooby Livingston, who is a student who does not want to go to collage, and is a slacker who has no idea what he wants to do in the future. That makes his parents, Marty and Fern, ticked off at him, and also their middle child Brady to the suspection that he is gay. Their youngest son Mike, is ten years old, and is complety spoiled, and also interested in their live in maid Consuelo's life and family history. As Tobey shoots the documentary, the family deals with problems that arise, untill finally "Nonfiction" and the movie comes to a surprising and bitter end.
The end of "Nonfiction" surprised me. I did not see anything like that coming. It also made me think that I should have seen it coming. I was decieved. What I liked about the movie was how the two stories were related to each other. They were both about high school life, and the problems that teenagers face. They were also totally unrelated, because they both focus on the different types of storytelling. The documentary being the nonfiction. The short stories being the fiction. I thought that "Storytelling" was a very funny, and very brilliant film. It was short and sweet. I liked the scene where Mike spills some juice, finds the maid crying about how one of her family members has been excuted for rape and murder, and then kindly asks her to clean it up for it. It is a character study, because it shows how spoiled this family is, and how they have everything done for them. Throughout the film, except for Mike, they don't even notice that she is around.
"Storytelling" deals with another major subject of racism, so it is not for everyone. In "Fiction" Gary Scott's character is black, and in Vi's final story, with a black character like him in it, everybody in the class has a comment to say about how it is a black man. I feel that this shows how just because something happens to somebody else, and a black man is the cause of it, it is racism. It's a sad, but true fact. "Storytelling" was a great movie, and it is not a film for everybody, but those with an open mind will enjoy it.
ENJOY!
Rated R for strong sexual content, language and some drug use.
Movie Review: The deeply uncomfortable and FUGLY truth...
Summary: 5 Stars
...is what Solondz seems to excel in capturing in his movies, and if you have the stomach to sit through it, it's hard not to admire the man's sheer artistic ballsiness as well as his virtuosity.
Many of us come to a movie expecting to find clear distinctions between "good" and "bad" characters whom we are able to peg within the first five minutes, to be manipulated and cliched into identifying with the "good" characters so that we really care about the outcome of the predictable clash between them and the "bad" characters, as if the Happy Uplifting Life-Lessons-Learned ending was ever in doubt for even a nanosecond. That is, after all, what Hollywood spoonfeeds us 90% of the time---not only the cheesey action blockbusters but also the alleged "dramas" and "comedies" too...it's all been focus-grouped to death before the final cut. Make that focused-grouped to death before the contract to produce the film is even signed.
So it is no wonder that many people have a problem with a movie like this. It's basically one short, about a creative writing class, its freaky and mediocre students, its freaky and sadistic teacher who may or may not be another mediocre writer. As a veteran of many collegiate creative writing classes, I can attest that there are quite a few grains of truth here.
The longer second film is about a typically dysfunctional upper-middle class suburbian family headed by the venerable John Goodman, complete with exploited Latin American maid. Again, just like the vision of suburbia in his earlier film "Happiness," this one definitely rang more than its fair share of bells.
There really are no "good" characters---everyone is dysfunctional in their own ways, some more grotesquely than others. That's one of the most beautifully refreshing things about Solondz's work: he never cops out and inserts some easy-to-root-for lollipop characters but instead challenges us to work hard to infer some redeeming qualities in all of them, and makes us acutely aware of the difficulty of that work.
Yes Solondz's is a brutally dark and merciless vision of life and people in general, but I'd argue that it is a largely accurate one...if we are willing to strip away our comforting habitual delusions/cliches and see the spades for the spades that they all are. The only really obvious flight of fancy here is the Latin maid's revenge at the end, which I gather is more of a fantasy sequence than anything else, or perhaps prophetic and allegorical.
And Solondz never fails to infuse his films with plenty of jet-black humor, spontaneity and originality. You never feel as if he's beating you over the head with The Message (calling Steven Spielberg and Spike Lee!), or taking the easy way out, or copping out and dumbing things down for easier consumption by a wider audience.
In light of the films that are usually made, "Storytelling" (along with his other film, "Happiness") is nothing short of miraculous. Hats off to Solondz for refusing to take prisoners.
Movie Review: Another Gem
Summary: 5 Stars
All I can say is WOW! With each consecutive film that Todd Solondz creates, the subject gets more interesting, the atmosphere gets more uncomfortable and tense...I thought this movie was great!Divided into two unrelated stories, one is "fiction," the other is non-fiction.
I think it's interesting how the first story is called fiction. It's about a writing student, Vi, who ultimately writes her best story based on a real experience. Yet her teacher, Mr. Scott, says, "It may have actually happened, but once you write it down...it's fiction." I never thought of it that way. There are two versions, a rated and unrated. Personally I prefer to see the unrated version of any movie because that is ultimately what the director envisioned, that's what he or she wants us to see. The most disturbing scene is of course the sex scene between Vi and Mr. Scott, where she is forced to scream racist obscenities in the act. However, I think that it's a pretty raw representation of how a person who thinks she is open-minded, worldly and unprejudiced, clearly is often kidding herself.
The second story, "non-fiction" is a little funnier, about a down-and-out documentarian who wants to film the typical family/student growing up in 21st century suburbia. I can't say that I know what it's like to look at the world through the eyes of one who grew up as a total outcast, but it seems to me that Solondz' take on life in suburbia is way too exaggerated. For example, that little kid, Mikey, is freakishly evil. His mother, beautifully portrayed by Julie Hagerty, is like a cookie cut version of a Barbie sans personality and all. However, it's possible that the exaggeration was necessary in order to illustrate a point that people living in or growing up in that environment can be quite sheltered, ignorant of the rest of the world less privileged, hypocritical.
This film goes quickly, it feels like it ended so suddenly. Now that I think about it though, it probably ended right where it was most necessary. I also think whoever was in charge of casting this film was right on...excellent cast all the way through.
The humor, in classic-Solondz form, is DARK, biting and hits hard. Again, as with Happiness, this film is not at all for the lighthearted. Please be mindful of the fact that if there is ANYTHING that may offend you, Solondz will find it in one of his films. I know of no other filmmaker who is able to take the concept of "no sacred cows" as far as he can...and I think that's good. None of these more "offensive" issues are done strictly to be gratuitous. He films them in a way that almost seems, dare I say, tasteful?!
"Storytelling" has a lot of depth in terms of what motivations people have to do the things they do. It makes me think about our belief systems, our morals, our "issues," and why we have them. It makes me think about how authentic people really are with each other, how much of themselves, emotionally, intellectually and otherwise, people are willing to admit to the rest of the world.
Movie Review: Reality for the hell of it
Summary: 5 Stars
Storytelling, based on two acts, on first glance may appear to be somewhat unreleated. But there are fine points to the ever downward spiraling hell that is Todd Solondz's vision.In part one we see the story of a disfigured and disabled student and his lover, she doesn't want to hear his revised story. Things start sinking with their eventual breakup. This leads to an encounter that is humiliating and in a story characterized as rape. More bad things happen and we get to examine what exactly is 'fiction' and 'reality'?
The answer depends upon the viewer. One take is the humiliation is a form of rape, if not physical, then emotional. And there is no question that issue is fair game, but so is the choice the character makes in a series of smaller humiliations which leads to her crushing experience. Or perhaps the another train of thought is don't get involved with self-absorbed (fill in your favorite invective).
The second, longer segment is about a slacker type filmmaker. He has a mid-life issue and focuses on school days 20 years ago, in particular High School. This leads him on a search for a subject which he finds after some rejections. Eventually he finds his subject in Scooby, a seemingly lost person that doesn't seem all that removed from his documentor.
As the documentary unfolds and we see the life beyond the documentary we meet the seemingly normal American nuclear family. We see the disagreements between siblings, the disinterest between family members and their various stages of being out of touch with reality...courtesy of, that's right, suburbia. Now this could easily be a film killer as Solodnz has done three films about (sub)uban decay and has managed to outrage and get laughs at the expense of this sub-culture. Thankfully there is some seeming self-deprecation in this segment of Storytelling.
As the plot progresses betrayals of all kinds and sizes occur with different results concluding in a - depending on your way of thinking - ironic or sick ending. I lean towards ironic and intentionally ambigious to one of the major characters. There seems to be a lot of self awareness in Storytelling, the other thing that could easily kill a film. What keeps this film fresh is it's black humor and it's premise.
In the end the meaning between both parts of the whole is fiction is just another form of reality, that those that want to ignore parts of their existance do so and lead a fictional life. Conversely, those that deal in fiction find themselves within the story whether intentional or not. The way we percieve reality and fiction are a fine line and one Storytelling does a fine job of getting across even if it isn't evident immediately.
Movie Review: Brilliant vision of how to tell a story
Summary: 5 Stars
The mode of portraying a tale is in focus in Storytelling through two different stories that are disconnected, yet associated to one another, as one deals with the fictional and the other the non-fictional. In the first part, Fiction, Vi (Selma Blair) is in a relationship with Marcus (Leo Fitzpatrick) who suffers from cerebral palsy and both are attending the same university. Vi and Marcus are currently enrolled in the same creative writing class where the students scrutinize each other's writing. Fiction exposes how personal experiences are turned into writing, which is callously slaughtered by judgmental readers as they their own set of values to the cerebral playing field of literature. The second part of Storytelling, Non-fiction, illiterates the reality of the world as Scooby Livingston (Mark Webber) perceives it. Scooby lives in a upper-class bubble protected by his ruling father, Marty (John Goodman), where Scooby is constantly asked, "what are you going to do with your life?" This endless questioning of Scooby's future seems to have been stressful for him as he has sunk into a zombie-like state. Scooby escapes reality through smoking pot or chewing down a couple of mushrooms where he flees into dreams of working as a co-host with David Letterman. The day when a shoe salesman, who aspires to make film, visits Scooby's high school in order to make a documentary about the process of entering college Scooby believes that this is his chance to make connections in the world of media. However, when the documentary comes along it begins to depict the dream-like world in which Scooby lives in.
Storytelling is a clever film that displays the symbiosis between the audience and the storyteller, which is meticulously directed by Solondz. Solondz depicts the power of the audience to choose what to believe and what to disregard if it is not portrayed in an manner that the audience can accept. In addition, Solondz offers a notion of how the power of storytelling can sway an audience's convictions in a chosen direction if carefully planned. In a sense Storytelling is a philosophical film in regards to film and film making, which can be derived from the economics, politics, and the arts. Yet, the philosophical debate of Storytelling is deep beneath the surface as the audience must use a dialectic approach in order to reach it. Nonetheless, Storytelling offers a terrific cinematic experience as it offers the audience to choose whether to sink into thought or merely enjoy the ride.