Long-Ended Musical Fued Ended Again

Yoko One broke up The Beatles.  A lot of people say that, but of course it isn't true.  By the time Ono started dating John Lennon in 1966, the famous foursome were already losing interest in their partnership, wanted to explore different musical directions, and were quarreling over their management.  Still, Ono often gets the blame, because she was there.  Whatever lingering resentment that may have existed between Ono and former member Paul McCartney at the time of the breakup has long since dissipated- McCartney has said previously that she did not break up the band and the two of them shared the stage when Lennon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.  Still, it was confirmed earlier this week that the long-dead feud between the two musicians has finally, ultimately, and forever been put to rest.  It's unclear why this already-settled matter is being reported as being settled again, but it's nice to know.

Incidentally, McCartney has a new album out, 'New'.

Captain Phillips

Whether they’re plundering peaceful fishing villages in search of buried doubloons or attacking shipping vessels off the coast of Somalia, it is generally agreed upon that pirates are bad guys.  What they do is illegal and immoral and dangerous.  Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips, based off a true story of an actual pirate hijacking in 2009, does not dispute this.  But the pirates aren’t cast as snarling villains, either.  Captain Phillips is, first and foremost, an effective action movie, but it’s also a political commentary where the pirates aren’t always unsympathetic and the U.S government is just a little bit scary.

Richard Phillips is a middle-aged commercial sea captain.  He has a wife and a couple of growing children.  He is taciturn, steadfast, dependable and sort of destined to be played by Tom Hanks.  Hanks has always had a likable everyman quality to him, and as Phillips he projects a kind of grounded world-weariness that makes us root for him.  In early scenes we see him make the rounds of his ship, the MV Maersk Alabama, checking for wear and tear, making sure everything is ready for the voyage round the horn of Africa to Mombasa.  The ship is carrying food.  For Captain Phillips, this trip is just another job, and director Paul Greengrass’ focus on the mundanity of it effectively sets up the chaos to come.

Meanwhile, in Somalia, we’re introduced to Abduwali Muse, a wiry young man who volunteers to lead the hijacking of Phillips’ ship.  This is just a job for Muse as well.  After the pirates board the Alabama, Muse turns to Phillips, gun in hand, and says, almost apologetically, that this is “just business.”

Screenwriter Billy Ray draws parallels like this between Phillips and Muse early and often.  On one level, attempts to compare the two are strained, even in bad taste.   Phillips is the one shipping food to give to starving people in Monbasa, Muse the one hijacking his ship and demanding upwards of $30 million in ransom.  Muse and his crew are in the wrong, but the movie gives us little moments where we can empathize with them.  Upon learning that they’ve boarded an American ship, their faces light up like kids at Christmas.  This is a good haul, one that could keep their families fed for a long while.  They chomp a local root to keep their energy up, and you can’t watch them for long without thinking about how very, very young they all are.

But what endears them to us the most is how absolutely screwed they are.  Since the movie is based on a true story, few in the audience doubt that Captain Phillips himself will live, but we don’t know about the pirates.  As news of the hijacking spreads to the United States Navy, it quickly becomes clear that they are not going to be okay.  Greengrass depicts the military as cold, faceless, and merciless.  The Marine snipers crouching under the railings of an American battleship are drenched in shadow, the hulking, armed officers that surround Muse after he is lured onto their boat terrifying in their uniformity.   Muse’s storming of the Maersk Alabama is frightening for the crew, but the movie is more than a little wary of the U.S. government as well.

Hanks’ Captain Phillips is in the middle, a decent man who is unjustly kidnapped but still regrets what must happen to his kidnappers.  In the end, he doesn’t know how to react.  Neither does the movie, not completely, perhaps because there is no right way to react to impossible situations like this one.

Gravity

Stars.

Gravity, the movie, not the partially-understood fundamental interaction of nature, is primarily a visual exercise. And it’s a successful one. The movie is glorious to look at, full of weightless tracking shots dancing through space, eerily quiet moments of astronauts floating in zero-G, and breathless sequences where our puny human stars are thrown against floating debris, battered space stations, and the void. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Apollo 13, movies have used the unique properties of outer space to impress audiences, but Gravity doesn’t coast on the accomplishments of its predecessors. In one sequence, first-time astronaut Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) makes it safely aboard a space station. She peels off her spacesuit piece by piece and curls into a fetal position, hanging in the air, twirling slowly round for a long, silent minute. It’s a lovely moment that works because Gravity is still impressed with the visuals of weightlessness, and we're free to join it.

When the movie isn’t pausing to regard the beauty of bodies in space, it’s a small-scale survivor thriller, a disaster movie for two. Bollock’s Dr. Stone has been sent to make repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope, supervised by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). Ground control warms them that rubble from a defunct Russian satellite is hurtling their way, and soon the Hubble is busted to bits and the two astronauts are drifting through space, joined by a tether and making use of Kowalski’s rocket pack to travel to the International Space Station. Director Alfonso Cuarón comes up with wonderfully inventive ways to highlight their vulnerability by, say, attaching a camera to the front of Bollock’s suit to watch the horizon rise and fall over and over behind her as she spins, helpless, through space, or framing the characters against the softly glowing earth however many hundreds of miles below.

Gravity tries, on occasion, to be more than a showcase for visual creativity, but always comes up short. In the lead roles, Bullock and Clooney are fine, but the script doesn’t really demand they be anything more. You have to wonder why the producers would bother getting two big stars to play these roles in the first place, since their faces are often obscured by space helmets and their performances play second fiddle to the special effects. As the two drift toward the space station, they talk about the Bullock character’s life on the ground. She’s trying to forget about a traumatizing event back home, and the script takes a stab at exploring the theme of how to let go of one’s past. It never makes an impression, though. How could it, when it has to compete with an elemental battle for survival set against shots of the sun rising over planet Earth?

Gravity, then, doesn’t have the ambition of something like 2001, a movie that dealt with ideas as bold as its visuals. But that shouldn’t diminish how impressive these visuals are. These are boundary-pushing special effects at a time when it’s easy to assume that special effects have no more boundaries to push. It’s an argument for keeping movies on the big screen when the temptation is to watch everything at home at your computer. See it on the biggest screen you can and be wowed.