Saturday at the Movies

I blogged yesterday morning and then sat down to continue the book I'm currently reading, Adam Zamoyski's Rite of Peace. The book is truly entertaining but I just didn't feel like reading. Even I, an abibliophobiac if there ever was one (see here and here), sometimes need a break.

So I watched movies, one old, one new. The old one, All About Eve, is marvelously entertaining, featuring Bette Davis in perhaps her finest role as the aging, vain, tempestuous, stage-actress Margot Channing. It's a delicious part and Ms. Davis sunk her teeth into it with great relish - the perfect role for a woman once commonly referred to in Hollywood as "Mother Goddam." George Sanders is nearly as fun in the role of the unscrupulous newspaper columnist Addison Dewitt. If the movie has a fault, it's the performance of Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, the woman who aims to replace Ms. Davis on the stage and in the bedroom. As played by Ms. Baxter, the character is a bit of a cipher, too soft and dreamy-eyed to be believable as a scheming back-stabber. But this is a quibble. The performances of Ms. Davis and Mr. Sanders are what to watch for here, along with probably the best dialogue Joe Mankiewicz ever wrote in his long and distinguished career.

My sweetheart then joined me to watch Once, a 2006 film out of Ireland. I had never heard of it until last week when a friend of my wife's mentioned it to her. It concerns a street musician with hopes for a record contract and the relationship he develops with a young woman who has recently emigrated from the Czech Republic. Billed as a modern-day musical, the movie had great reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes so I thought we'd give it a shot.

Once certainly has its charms. The movie opens with the musician on the street playing Van Morrison's "And The Healing Has Begun," so it immediately had me rooting for it (at another time I will blog about my love of Van Morrison's music. Suffice for now to simply state that he is my favorite musician, period, and "And The Healing Has Begun" one of his finest songs.) There are some good laughs early on, and the relationship between the musician and the young woman (who also turns out to have musical talent) is touching and effective. But the story is slight, too slight to hang a complete movie on. Even with at least half the film taken up with music, it still clocks in at a mere eighty-five minutes. Yes, I understand the the scenes of the two playing together are meant to convey the deepening of the pair's relationship, but it's overdone. They play together here, they play together there, they play with some others here, there and everywhere; by the end, that's really all there is to it. Basically it's a will-they-or-won't-they story. Will they, once they stop playing, end up in bed, will they end up together, or will they go their separate ways?

Finally, there's the music, which must be commented on given its importance to the story. The musician plays a fine guitar, and the young woman a lovely piano, especially the Mendelssohn tune, which was beautiful. He can also sing. The songs themselves however, while effective within the scope of the movie, suffer from the same ailments most modern music suffers from; they are tuneless, which makes them all sound the same; they are hung upon the flimsiest of musical structures; and they are lyrically undisciplined. To one who regards all these things as intrinsic to good music, the music fails. The pieces played in the movie seem to me more like chants than songs. Others obviously disagree, judging by the reviews of the movie's soundtrack over at Amazon. But then, I'm an odd duck, a bit of an anachronism, when it comes to judging modern music. Young people seem to like this personality-free style of music and I won't begrudge them that. But as for myself, when the credits rolled and I heard the music playing outside the scope of the movie for the first time, I was reaching for the mute button.