God, Angels and Science are Big this Week But a Black and White Award Winner Outdoes them All

In two separate movies this week, Paul Bettany turns against God. He’s an angel refusing his orders in one, and Charles Darwin writing to demote him in the other. Maybe you prefer Harrison Ford as a research scientist or (surely not) The Rock as the tooth fairy. Better to try some quality and art from Austria’s favorite misanthrope.

THE WHITE RIBBON:
Michael Haneke from Austria won big awards both at Cannes and now the Golden Globes for this mesmerizing and beautifully staged examination of life in a German village just before World War One. True to his now-familiar inclination, he finds mostly unpleasantness, or as one character puts it, “malice, envy, apathy, brutality, persecutions and petty acts of revenge.” Only a school teacher and a nanny are nice people. A baron rules like in medieval times; a parson is a strict disciplinarian to his children; a doctor abuses both his midwife and his daughter. Somebody seriously injures him by tripping him off his horse, other accidents follow and fear sets in. A farm hand tries sabotage. The children move around mysteriously like a gang.

This village is over-loaded with problems but grim as it sounds, the film is so well-written, acted and photographed (in crisp black and white) that it’s utterly engrossing. What I don’t see, and I’ve watched it more than once, is how it represents the roots of fascism. Haneke has said it stems from “absolutism” in the villagers’ thinking. A stretch, I’d say, but worth discussing.
(Tinseltown, in subtitled German). 4 out of 5  

CREATION:
When you think of all the shrill arguments Charles Darwin stirred up in the 150 years since he published “On The Origin of Species’’ it’s a wonder there isn’t more conflict in this film. Oh sure, biologist Tomas Huxley (played by Toby Jones) spouts a provocative line: “You have killed God. Good riddance to the vindictive old bugger”. That’s rare, though. Most of the film is much too calm calm as it looks at Darwin while he was forming his theories about natural selection. Paul Bettany does well conveying his personal struggles over the explosive ideas he was writing but the film turns ponderous. He treads softly around his God-fearing wife, Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and they manage only one good argument. All the while, he was grieving the death of a daughter and spoke with her in recurring visions. She encouraged him to get on with his work. That relationship is at this film’s centre and comes from a book by Darwin’s great grandson. While it’s refreshing, for a change, to see the scientist depicted as a family man and a humanist it’s also oddly off kilter. (Tinseltown)  2 ½ out of 5

LEGION:
In this one, God, in a fit of pique or something, sends his angels to destroy humanity. Paul Bettany, as the Archangel Michael, opts instead to defy him and safeguard a waitress pregnant with a messiah. The action centers in a remote diner where reliable actors like Dennis Quaid, Charles S. Dutton and Lucas Black can help him do battle against hordes of apparently possessed people massing living-dead-like outside. A visual effects specialist directed and co-wrote. He generates lots of suspense, hot desert atmosphere and exciting action. Unfortunately the film just can’t overcome its absurd premise. It can’t even manage to properly explain it. What’s special about this baby? How is it mankind’s only hope and why does God want to kill it? Nobody bothers to tell us. In true movie cliché form the baby decides to be born right in the middle of a big battle. He’s also awfully huge for a newborn. Even then it took one more step before things got really silly. Michael who had been wielding machine guns like a pro suddenly has wings. He doesn’t fly, just wears them. They look cumbersome in a showdown battle with another angel, Gabriel, who also has wings. You need a sense of humor to enjoy this stuff.
(At 12 lower mainland theatres)  2 1/2 out of 5     

EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES:
The twinkly music tells you right off that this is going to be an inspiring movie, the kind we usually see around Chistmastime. Or on TV. It has a lot of a “disease of the week” feel to it but is really better than that.  It also has two sizeable stars playing their roles with sincerity. Brendan Fraser quivers his upper lip and stares with puppy dog eyes as he pleads for medical help for his two children afflicted with Pompe disease, a form of MS. He finds a scientist in Nebraska (Harrison Ford) with a promising treatment but an abrasive personality. Both quit their jobs, start a research company and later, under orders from a venture capital outfit, join big pharma in Seattle.

Along the way they argue and yell about the details of research, drug trials and science vs. business. Gruff Harrison turns soft in some tender scenes with Fraser’s cheerful wheelchair-bound daughter while the girl’s mother (Keri Russell) specifies the film’s theme. “Do we accept our fate, or do we fight it?”  You know what’s coming. The film gets us there without too much sentimentality and proves surprisingly easygoing during a low and then a high point. That makes it a bit flat. It’s a good story though, and true but told with a few liberties. Harrison, for instance, represents an amalgam of three scientists.
(Tinseltown, Dunbar, Dolphin and 12 other theatres from here to Chilliwack). 3 out of 5

Also playing …

GENIUS WITHIN: THE INNER LIFE OF GLENN GOULD:

I saw Glenn Gould a few times in the halls at the old CBC Radio building in Toronto. I didn’t know at the time how eccentric the celebrated pianist was. He looked like many of the freelancers who came in to make documentaries. This film shows that there was a huge gap between his private life and his public image and how eventually that image took over his life. There are interviews with old friends (even Petula Clark) and some never-before-shown films. It’s a much-praised documentary that is getting a special one time screening by The First Weekend Club. It’s Tuesday, Jan. 26, at District 319 (319 Main Street). There’s a wine reception at 6:30 with music by pianist Nicholas Rada and at 7:30 director Peter Raymont will introduce his film by video link. A party follows. $15 covers everything.
Details at www.firstweekendclub.ca

ABSURDISTAN:
Another of these small films that play the Granville for a week and then disappear. This one is set in a former Soviet Republic but made by a German director who got the idea from a Turkish news story. As in Aristophanes' play Lysistrata and a story out of Kenya just last year, the women in a struggling village start a sex strike. The issue isn't war, though. They want their lazy men to get moving and fix the town water supply. It's a matter of some urgency to a young couple who have been sweethearts since childhood but have only a short window (according to a fortune teller's prophecy) to consumate their relationship.

Allegorical whimsy, magic realism, silly slapstick and even grinning lechery swirl around in this Russian-language but minimum-dialogue film. (The director is a fan of the old silents). Most reviewers found it a pleasant and gentle fable, although one wrote that only the attractive couple manage to enliven it.
(Granville Theatre)

TOOTH FAIRY:
It just won’t do to say “the kids will like it”, not when other reviewers say “nothing works” in this “forced saccharine fantasy”. Dwayne Johnson, previously acting as “the Rock”, is a hockey player known for knocking out teeth. He’s also tough with children. When he tells a young girl there’s no tooth fairy, he’s swished to fairyland, lectured to by the one in charge (Julie Andrews, no less) and sentenced to be the tooth fairy for two weeks. Yes, clad in a pink tutu and bearing wings, he sneaks into children’s bedrooms to gather those baby teeth. No thanks, not even with Billy Crystal around briefly offering comic advice.
(At Tinseltown and 13 other area theatres).