FILM REVIEW: ON THE ROAD By: Faiz No comments

Marylou (Kristen Stewart) in On the Road.

The beat goes on

 

By Ed Rampell

 

In Jack Kerouac’s novel and director Walter Salles’ film adaptions thereof, Sal Paradise (Sam Riley), Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) and male friends with literary aspirations and sexy female companions careen about the continent in a car, driving like whirling dervishes from place to place, stopping long enough to have madcap misadventures from Denver to Louisiana, San Francisco to Manhattan.

 

Of course, this is a gross oversimplification. What makes the novel -- and movie -- riveting is its context and subtext, as a testament of youthful restlessness and rebellion in America’s postwar years. Listen closely, and you’ll hear fascistic Senator Joe McCarthy on the radio; watch intently, and you’ll see Tricky Dick Nixon on the tube. Kerouac rendered in literary form the cadence and tempo of be-bop music. Along with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, On The Road is the seminal, iconic work of the Beat generation, a countercultural movement against the “American Way” of A-bombs, anti-communism, McCarthyism, materialism, uber-conformity, etc., in favor of a Bohemian quest for the meaning of life.

 

While the film has many attributes, one of the boldest aspects of this movie is its in-your-face homosexuality. It’s been about 20 or so years since I read On the Road, so memory may fail me, but I don’t remember the gay sex openly recounted in the published version of Kerouac’s text, which he self censored prior to Viking Press’ 1957 publication of the novel in those straighter, more straitlaced times. So if the filmmakers decided to inject this by actually making use of our greater freedoms of expression today, bravo.

 

However, I do recall what A. Robert Lee called “interracial love” in “Tongues Untied, Beat Ethnicities, Beat Multiculture” in the aforementioned The Philosophy of the Beats. Lee references “Sal’s campesina lover Terry”; Brazilian actress Alice Braga winsomely plays the character based on Bea Franco; Sal and Dean have an orgy with Mexican women and also befriend the African American jazz musician Walter (Terrence Howard). One can’t stress enough what a taboo it was for Kerouac to daringly depict inter-ethnic sex and friendships in America where apartheid was still widely practiced, as he also courageously did in other works, such as in 1958’s The Subterraneans. Progressives will also be moved by sequences of the migrant farm workers’ plight.

 

  

 

 

FILM REVIEW: SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN By: Faiz No comments

Raveenna (Charlize Theron) in Snow White and the Huntsman.

Poisonous words for the princess

By Don Simpson

After a brief introduction to the wish that made Snow White the fairest baby of them all, we meet the prepubescent Snow (Raffey Cassidy). It is not long before her mother (Liberty Ross) the queen dies, thus leaving Snow with her father (Noah Huntley) the king. Other than the sadness of her mother’s early death, Snow’s childhood is idyllic and so is her surrounding world. The oh-so-peaceful and pure Snow loves nature just as much as nature loves her.

When an evil army forces Snow’s father to enter his kingdom into battle, a beautiful woman — Ravenna (Charlize Theron) — is discovered in the rubble of the aftermath. The king is instantly smitten and claims Ravenna as his wife. Ravenna is almost immediately crowned queen and becomes Snow’s stepmother — make that her evil stepmother. In a moment of near-Shakespearean tragedy, Ravenna murders Snow’s father, thus seizing tyrannical control over his kingdom. Ravenna’s army kills or exiles all of the king’s supporters and Snow is imprisoned indefinitely.

Basically, Ravenna is an egomaniacal bitch who spends half of her days chatting with the mirror man (Christopher Obi), confirming time and time again that she is the fairest of them all. Until one day she is not. Oh no! Snow (Kristen Stewart) has reached puberty, which finally qualifies her to enter into the fairer than thou competition going on inside Ravenna’s brain. The psychotically image-focused Ravenna must claim Snow’s heart in order to become the the fairest of them all once again.

Snow promptly escapes, running away into the dark forest; Ravenna hires Thor — I mean, The Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) — to track her down. It is not long before Snow has a small (some more literally than others) entourage of men who are willing to risk their lives to protect her. Oh, and at least two of the men are totally smitten with her.

Probably as a result of Stewart’s inherent sulkiness, a prophesy is provided to us as an excuse for the unflinching dedication of Snow’s followers. Because other than her pale skin, Stewart is unable to convey any of the alluring qualities that are integral to the character of Snow — you know, like peacefulness, tranquility, and innocence. Stewart’s Snow is like a grumpy goth chick with a perpetual frown. In other words, Snow is nearly identical to every other character Stewart has attempted to portray.

For the first two acts, Snow repeatedly makes it clear that she is a pacifist who will never hurt another living creature; but when she rises from the dead in the third act, she becomes all bad ass. Suddenly, Snow decides to lead an army of men into an against-all-odds battle with Ravenna’s army. Yeah, I get it. If the legend is correct, Snow is the savior, the chosen one, whatever you want to call her; it is her calling to save the world from evil by way of a bloody crusade with no exit strategy. You know, like Joan of Arc…or George W. Bush.

Rupert Sanders’ debut feature is a good idea that has gone horribly wrong. I will give Sanders credit for some brilliant visual ideas, but the writing pales (pun intended) in comparison. Maybe if writers Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini relied less upon Christian theology, the story might have been a little less heavy-handed and hokey? Early on, it seemed as though Snow White and the Huntsman might be a clever post-feminist diatribe about body image, pacifism and environmentalism. Boy, was I way off the mark!

Theron gives the only decent performance in the entire film, though there are even a few scenes that she probably could have dialed back a few notches. Theron has made a career of being a chameleon. She can become old or ugly just as effortlessly as she can become impeccably beautiful — and Snow White and the Huntsman relies quite heavily upon that ability. Ravenna’s appearance is in a constant state of flux and Theron is convincing no matter what quantity of make up or CGI is applied to her face. It is a damn shame that the other actors in Snow White and the Huntsman are incapable of performing with comparable range.