Topsy Turvy (1999)

This has been on my to see list for 10 years. Mike Leigh (director of one of my favorites - Secrets and Lies) delivers the epic tale of Gilbert and Sullivan's struggle for meaning towards the end of the 19th century.

Despite far-reaching fame and impressive riches, lyricist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan are having difficulty putting together a new musical opera. Gilbert is not happy with the total whimsey that his material is treated with and Sullivan wants to be known as a more serious composer. Their stage collaborators all have their own struggles too and it is with strained effort that one of the their final original productions, The Mikado, makes the stage.

The film is long. Really slow and long. We are left sometimes just watching rehearsals and performances of G & S's musicals for 4-6 minutes. This really kills the pacing, but it also gives us a true feeling of what entertainment was like and what the writer/composer pair were struggling with.

Great acting. Great costumes. Great music.

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A Room With A View (1985)

The Victorian era appears again in film to show how pent up feelings and overly rigid expectations can get you into trouble.

Lucy Honeychurch goes to Venice from England for a holiday. She is swept off her feet in the romantic air by another Brit who is not afraid to express his passion for life. When they return home, he inadvertently ends up moving in down the road as Lucy becomes engaged to an urban snob.

I never know what to do with these kinds of tales since they seem so far removed from real life (even though it did represent real life for many people in the late 19th century). It is refreshing to see a joie de vivre contrasted with staunch formality. Love is always good too.

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Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1998)

It has been 3 years since I read Alexandre Dumas' massive classic and so I was excited to watch this 7 hour mini-series. I can't say I was excited to see a gigantic Edmond Dantes in the form of Gérard Dépardieu - he's a great actor, but there are some parts actors should not play.

Dantes is just promoted to captain of a ship and engaged to his true love when three men send him to prison motivated by self-interest. He wastes away in prison for nearly 2 decades when fortune presents itself and he manages to escape. Armed with virtually unlimited funds, the new Count of Monte Cristo meticulously plots his revenge on the three villains - now all very successful Parisians.

Some of the obscure subplots are omitted, but most are kept and this made it a joy to watch. I even squealed with delight a few times.

The film races through the first 1/4 of the book (pre-prison and prison time). This certainly allowed more time for the vengeance, but it failed to adequately show why and how the vengeance was taking place. There were a number of times when the film strayed far from the book. Fortunately, none were crushing for me; they even added depth at times.

All in all, it is apparent that Dépardieu is all too eager to play as many roles of classic French literature. I'm glad that he is such a tremendous actor in order to make up for not being the suitable body type for the role.

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The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

I was half expecting this to be a melo-dramatic piece with a simplistic plot and poor acting, despit it winning the Oscar for best picture in 1937. Gratefully, I was very surprised, even inspired by the movie.

Émile Zola had only been dead 35 years when the film was made. He was a muckraking writer in France during the last half of the 19th century. The film spends nearly the first half of it's time showing Émile's rise to fame from living in poverty with another poor artist, Paul Cézanne. He ultimately becomes very comfortable with his fame and wealth, but is disturbed both by Cézanne and by the wife of Capt. Dreyfus of the Dreyfus Affair. Dreyfus had been falsely accused, convicted and exiled to South America. Zola then picks up his pen and decides to get back into the business of truth at the risk of losing his reputation (which he does for a time).

The film is magnificently written. I wasn't too familiar with either Zola or Dreyfus and so the film had me guessing throughout. There are two excellent speeches delivered by Paul Muni (playing Zola) that must have been lifted from transcripts. The sequence of events and editing also speaks highly to the art of cinema at the time.

Muni is superb and doesn't overdo it as the excitable yet pensive Zola. Apparently he would undergo 2 1/2 hours of make-up for the part each morning and grew his own beard (which looks very real as a result). The film is in fact so engrossing that I can't recall anything in the film that looked fake.

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The Illusionist (2006)

I enjoyed this movie, but it wasn't spectacular. It's probably very tough these days to truly impress me because perfection has been attained by a few films, so it's easy to pick apart ones that come close.

What I did enjoy about the film were the tricks. The illusionist, Eisenheim (played seriously by Ed Norton of Fight Club), pulls off some pretty spectacular stunts, though it's pretty easy to guess that most of them were probably CGI, they looked so good. The fact they looked so good made them all the more enjoyable for me.

I also enjoyed the rustic, 19th century, Vienna where the film was set, though it was actually shot in Czech Republic. The regal costumes and the beautiful European forests were terrific background. I was disappointed with the accents which should have been German, but poor English ones. If the film was in German, I would have been a bit more convinced and taken in by The illusion.

As it turns out I wasn't terribly fooled by much in this movie. I consistently knew what was going to happen by the not so subtle clues placed throughout the movie. That's not to say that it wasn't enjoyable, it was very entertaining.

Paul Giamatti's (Lady in the Water & Sideways) character wasn't given much to play with. He was rather a flat character, which is too bad. In fact, most of the characters in the film were flat and monochrome. Everyone had 1 personal goal, which makes for a very distilled story, but not a very intriguing one.

I liked the fervour displayed briefly by the religious folks when it appears that Eisenheim has proven that there is life after death. This was one of the highlights of the film as it showed how easily the throngs can be fooled by a little showmanship.

Something that did bother me was the way it encouraged you to be happy about the outcome which includes one of the character's death. I sense this is a normal value in movies where you want the bad guy to die - mainly because all you are presented with in most movies is the bad sides of the "bad guy." It is a unique film that portrays the gracious side of the protagonist towards his nemesis. This is not one of those films.

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