‘The Notebook’: Brothers Grim, No Gosling
As a reviewer, it is my responsibility to judge a film on its own merits, even if I’m disinclined to its genre. I admit it, though: When faced with the prospect of yet another film about the Holocaust, it’s hard to suppress a groan. It’s not that I’m immune to the unspeakable horrors of that chapter in human history; if anything, as the descendant of Polish Jews, I’m especially sensitive to them. But sitting through films on the topic has become miserable, especially because, well, there are just so many of them. Fair or not, at this point I expect a Holocaust movie to shed new insight in order to legitimize its existence.
The good news is that “The Notebook,” adapted from Agota Kristof’s 1986 bestseller Le Grand Cahier, does. It also, it should be noted, is about as far we’re ever going to get from the 2004 Ryan Gosling-Rachel McAdams weepie that shares its name. Set in 1944 Hungary, this “Notebook” frames the evil revealed by the region’s Nazi Occupation as the most treacherous of fairy tales: one that realizes our childhood fear that there really are no trustworthy grownups. Continue Reading →
‘The Two Faces of January’ Are Skin-Deep
As much as it’s possible to write good-looking novels, Patricia Highsmith wrote good-looking novels. Cast against opulent European and American backdrops, many of them featured sly-eyed predators prowling the finest relics of Western Civilization: the finest autos, meals, wines, garments, jewels, music, and paintings – not to mention the finest fatted calves of old money. It’s not that Highsmith favored style over substance; it’s that the substance of her books was style itself, as well as how much larceny was committed in its good name.
Highsmith’s most famous sly-eyed predator, Ripley, hatched such elegant schemes that it was impossible not to root for him, though he had no loyalties of his own. It’s a small wonder that many films have been adapted from the Ripliad (as the Ripley series is called), or that the most well-received of them, Anthony Minghella’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” is one of the most good-looking films of the last two decades.
“The Two Faces of January,” the latest adaptation of a Highsmith novel, is also quite good-looking. As it begins, two affluent American tourists, the good-looking Chester (Viggo Mortensen) and his good-looking, younger wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst), are wandering through the sun-bleached glory of 1962 Athens when they encounter good-looking American Rydal (Oscar Isaac), who agrees to be their tour guide. This being a Highsmith adaptation, we learn soon enough that all is not what it seems. Chester and Colette are on the run, if idly – his latest stock-market scam has soured just enough to make laying low advisable – and Rydal is the kind of louche drifter who pockets two drachmas every time he makes change. The minuet the three dance together, in which Chester bemusedly observes Rydal’s small-potato swindles while the younger man bats his lashes at Colette, is still awfully good-looking. Continue Reading →
