Movie Review: Death at a Funeral (2010)

A Very Slow Death…

Directed by Neil LaBute

Death at a Funeral is a farce, based on the 2007 British film of the same name. I wish I'd known that before I watched it. I'll be honest, the farce may be a theater tradition, but most of the time they're just stupid. It's an intellectually redundant form of broad based comedy, the idiot relative of its more refined cousin, satire, which actually requires thinking. And generally speaking, the only thing worse than a French or British farce, is an American one. It simply doesn't work in Hollywood because big American films are always trying to make sure that everyone is happy at the end. That's assuming, of course, people GET to the end. I first checked my watch about forty-five minutes into the movie. I checked it again about ten minutes later. At one point I yawned, and it was only 9:30pm. So, that wasn't a good sign. But maybe I should go back to the reason I watched the movie in the first place.

Some of you may not remember, but when Chris Rock released his 1998 HBO special, Black and White, there were many, myself included, who considered him the preeminent comedian of his generation. Perhaps the closest thing to the reincarnation of a young Eddie Murphy. Unlike Murphy however, Rock was never able to transform his stand up success to movies, not in a starring role, at least. Lawrence, on the other hand, was a box office power for a short time in the late 1990's. In many ways, he was the antithesis of Rock; a sometimes funny stand up comedian whose stylings did translate into some big hits. Then Hollywood paid him $20 million to do Black Knight, he became arrogant, and was never the same.

All comedians are angry, but when they become arrogant – that is, when their arrogance infects their comedy – they lose their mass appeal. Ever wonder why Adam Sandler is still popular? The anger, and therefore the humility, real or not, is still evident in his work, and people can still identify with him.

As for this typically unfunny farce, well, there isn't a lot to say. There's a funeral, obviously, and some well known actors playing types. I already mentioned the two leads. Luke Wilson is himself. Tracy Morgan is himself. Regina Hall acts as though she's still working with the Wayan brothers. (Psst. This isn't another Scary Movie. You don't have to squeak your voice on every line reading.) Danny Glover is a grumpy, wheelchair bound grandfather. Zoe Saldana is here, although I'm not sure why. Seems like she's accepted every acting offer since Avatar. She probably would have been more effective here in the blue, ten foot body, with the long tail. None of these actors are ever funny. Oddly, the only laughs in the movie come from James Marsden. His frazzled character is the only one we actually believe.

Death at a Funeral never lets you inside. You never get the sense that the movie cares about its idiot characters, perhaps it's not supposed to, and consequently, doesn't care about you either. The best part of the movie was checking the display on my DVD player and realizing there were only nine minutes left. The movie is 89 minutes but feels much, much longer. If the purpose of this farce was to slow down the minute hand on my watch, the movie is a tremendous success. Otherwise, you'll wish you were the one in the casket.

* (out of five)

Copyright Stephen Burns 2010

Book Review: World Without End by Ken Follett

Sex in the… 14^th Century Village?

So, what happened?

If I had the opportunity to interview Ken Follett about this sequel to his runaway, 1989 bestseller, Pillars of the Earth, that's what I'd ask him. I know that over twenty years have elapsed between the two books, and that people change, but I'd want to know when he stopped writing novels and started writing religious propaganda.

I still remember discovering Pillars, sometime in the late nineties, on a paperback table in a local Chapters. A few of my friends had recommended it, and after reading the back cover, I decided to pick it up. I hadn't read any of Follett's thrillers, and this story, about a monk and a mason who want to build a cathedral, seemed weighty and ponderous. I figured I'd have to slug through it.

I'd never been so delighted to be wrong. Pillars was a wonderfully crafted story, populated with characters who, if some became types, were written with warmth and affection. That included the main protagonist, Prior Phillip, the honest monk who longed to serve God but was often thwarted by those self-seekers around him, including several of the monks under his care. And while the book sketched a church rife with corruption, it did so according to the characters, not their ideology. The men and women in Pillars were self-aware, but not otherworldly so, and they fit with the book's 12^th Century setting.

So, what happened?

I can't help but ask that question because the disappointment with his follow up is so severe. Pillars of the Earth, in some ways, was a bit of a soap opera, but the melodrama was contained somewhat by the loving care with which Follett described the architecture and the importance it played within town life. Unfortunately, there's no such affection in World Without End. I would say that Follett gets the historical details right, except it doesn't take long to realize that the characters here have been transplanted from a very, very long episode of Sex and the City. The male characters are either cruel or weak, except for the gay monk and any man born with some sort of physical shortcoming. The female characters think and dwell in post-enlightenment, post-feminist, post-modern, post-male, post-digital, post-universal ideas with much confusion and angst. This would make sense, of course, if they HAD been transported back in time. Maybe that's the chapter Follett forgot to write, in which case, the book would make a lot more sense.

The main character, Carrie... errr… Caris, is confused about everything. She's the daughter of one of the town's leading men (one of the few good men in the book, but he also has a deformed leg, so naturally, he's a good guy) and she hates that men can do whatever they want and she cannot. Follett, who clearly thinks that his main character is an excellent feminist who only cares about equality, doesn't realize that he's actually shown what he thinks of feminism by turning her into a petulant, whining brat. Caris also dislikes the church because the monks don't value rational thinking and the only reason the church exists is to keep people down. So, she muses about this quite a lot. She wonders why Reason and logic are not more valued. She never writes these thoughts down, but who knows, perhaps Descartes was thinking about her when he started his own musings on rationalism 150 years later.

Anyway, Caris loves one of the men in the town, Merthin, who's a brilliant engineer but also small and not good looking. (Can you see a pattern here?) He wants to marry her, but she doesn't know what she wants, so she muses more about the fate of women, who seem to have no option but to marry men, all of whom will inevitably lord it over her. All except Merthin, who is quiet and gentle. Still, he's just a stupid man, so Caris bullies him in her moodiness, toys with his emotions, is completely unable to get a grip on her own, and generally treats him like crap. Is this Follett's idea of feminism? Does he realize that he's drawn his proto-female savior as a complete jackass? According to Follett's rendering, she's just a bit confused. That is, what will she do with all this incredible 21^st Century self-awareness? Why couldn't we set the time machine ahead just a little?

Between the musings of our central reporter, err, character, we have the battle of good vs. evil, as revealed in the battle between the nunnery and the priory. Women vs. Men. And the winner is… well, the monks, of course. Those jerks have everything handed to them. The convent is prosperous, and the nuns are all kind and caring. The priory is filled with a bunch of shallow, dim-witted men, who can't figure out why they keep losing money. That statement, by the way, is repeated throughout the book. The monks apparently have no idea why they're losing money. (They never do figure it out.) The nuns do even better however, when Caris somehow recalls a book she read from Italy that reveals a new method of book keeping that allow her to keep track of her assets and liabilities on either side of the ledger, which makes it, like, so much easier to figure out if the convent is ahead. Why, she's the greatest accountant since the guy who got Capone on tax fraud! Oh wait, that doesn't happen until 1933, and here, it's only 1333. Never mind. Oh, and did I mention that Caris single handedly saved her father's business by, you guessed it, single handedly discovering a new way to dye wool. It's all so amazing!

Trouble comes however, when Caris ends up being accused of being a witch, and because she has a mole, you know, down there, she's like, totally a witch. And none of those stupid townspeople will listen because they're all scared and a bit slow. (We did do the nose and hat, but she's still a witch!)The prioress saves her though, by offering Caris a place as a nun. She knows that this angry young rebel doesn't actually believe in God, but the girl is such a good leader. So strong! But even she doesn't know that Caris is not just going to be any nun, but THE GREATEST NUN THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN.

The novel skips ahead a decade, and Caris is now one of the leaders in the convent. No, she doesn't have faith and has no use for God, but she's actually more warm and caring than the rest of the nuns (probably because she knows how stupid the whole God thing is), and the whole town knows it, too! Also, she's super smart, (did I mention what a good leader she is) and it is she who discovers that the prior has stolen the nuns' money to build himself a palace. He refuses to give it back. This is an outrage, of course, so Caris sets off to find the bishop, who is travelling with King Henry III as the English army sweeps across France. No problem. She'll get that money back no matter what.

So she sets out from the convent, and boy, she is really mad. Accompanying her is a beautiful younger nun, Mair, who's also a lesbian and in love with her. They do experience some difficulty when the two of them, alone, cross into France, and discover that the English army has raped and burned the French villages along the coast. Another big problem is that the sexual tension between the two nuns is pretty high, because the two girls have had sex, but Mair really, really loves Caris and Caris still thinks a lot about Merthin, although he's moved to Italy and she's still not sure whether or not she wants to marry him. Merthin is so unfair. Why can't they just keep having sex like they did before? Anyway, that makes it really hard on Mair, who really, really loves her and is so hot. So between the sexual tension and relational difficulties, along with the burned out villages and two massive armies trying to destroy one another, Caris realizes they need a disguise. The two of them dress like men, and manage to fool both the French and the English armies, even though they first must spend a full week on the battlefield helping the French surgeon dress wounds. When she finally gets to confront the king, she is very, very frustrated with him because he just won't listen to her. Typical man! The soldiers however, are gossiping about these amazing nuns, who have somehow travelled across two countries and two armies at war without a scratch, and have also managed to heal their relational difficulties. Thank goodness Caris is so clever!

Meanwhile, back in Kingsbridge, the man she loves, Merthin, continues to startle and amaze the townspeople with his nifty inventions, but hhe has been unable to convince the town to let him use his genius again to help rebuild the church tower. The townspeople, you see, are mostly stupid. (Those 14th Century morons.) Especially the men. So even though Merthin's ideas have literally saved the town from destruction, twice, no one supports him. (Did I mention that Merthin is small and not very good looking?) Thankfully, Caris gets back not a moment too soon, and she shows him what he needs to do to win the town over. There are more obstacles, but Caris overcomes them all. She resigns from the convent, appoints her successor, also manages to appoint the bishop and the prior, and finally decides to marry Merthin, as they become partners as the town's two most influential people. Did I mention that through a large swath of the novel Caris helps the town overcome the plague and is appointed not only as the head of the convent, but the head of the priory as well?

So, Mr. Follett, I know that I'm repeating myself, but what the hell happened?

About fifty pages into this book I started getting angry, but I kept reading in the hopes that I would find the same writer who'd once written one of my favourite novels. When it didn't happen, I kept reading because I knew that I would review it, and I wanted to spare people the fourteen bucks and hours of time reading this narrow minded schlock. The characters in the novel are not actually people, they're excuses for promoting Follett's agenda. Never mind that they have no nuance to them, what really offends is this idea that people are either good or bad. In Follett's case, bad people are those who believe in God, good people choose reason instead of God and treat people in the church as either weak minded or devious. Follett's ideas about feminism are as offensive as those of a fundamentalist, in that while it seems like he's favouring his female characters, what he's really doing is showing you just how silly women are, in his opinion, when they get power.

I'm sorry, but if you haven't figured out that people are not simple, and that religion and gender and sexuality has nothing to do with whether or not a person exhibits admirable qualities, then it's time to stop writing. Or at least, label your work like they do for Muslim fiction and Christian fiction. Just let us know that you're working through an agenda. Or write the chapter with time machine and how Caris was really an assistant on Sex and the City, and wanted to be like Carrie except that she wasn't funny and had no apparent flaws.

In Diana Gabaldon's review of this book for the Washington Post, she called it a morality play. That's one author showing kindness to another. World Without End treats both its characters and readers as idiots, and produces the same smugness Caris exhibits towards the people in her village. If that's what it means to be non-religious, I think I'd suddenly want to go to church. The irony is that Pillars of the Earth was written as a result of Follett's love for cathedrals, with the understanding that such cathedrals were not only a place to inspire majesty and grace, but to unite towns and villages behind a single idea, the acceptance of their own humanity. Twenty years have gone by, and Follett no longer has any use for humanistic ideals about the great possibilities that lie within people or the difference we can make in the world around us. His title reflects as much, and after you finish reading it, you realize that World Without End is not a statement of hope, but the conjoined misery of a rich, old man, who looks around and realizes that no matter what we try to do to make things better, things will never really change, and the world will keep on spinning out its misery.

Zero stars (out of five)

Copyright Stephen Burns 2010

Review: Clash of the Titans (2010)

Directed by Louis Leterrier

(2010)

This looks like a great summer flick. That's what you're thinking through the first twenty five minutes or so of Clash of the Titans, a 2010 remake of the campy 1981 cult classic. In the 2010 version, the sets and costumes are well done, the actors are determined, and the special effects are competent. But about halfway through this story of a demi-god, Perseus, who must complete certain heroic tasks to save the city of Argos from the gods, something changes. Oh, everything still looks good, but you realize that you don't care all that much. It isn't the fault of the actors, although Liam Neeson's Zeus looks, and sounds, like someone playing Santa at an office Christmas party. The star here is Sam Worthington, who plays Perseus, but the script gives no time for character development. Worthington, who was good in Terminator: Salvation and even better in Avatar, does his best, but his Perseus is a one note hero. He's Russell Crowe without the sadness, and consequently, the ballast, for us to care about him that much. And while the demi-god is insistent throughout the movie that he is choosing to be human, you don't believe it. He sounds like someone helping at a soup kitchen for a couple of days, who then looks forward to telling his other rich friends about his experience "relating to the people" over a bottle of Bordeaux. For an adventure story to work, you have to empathize with the hero. You have to believe that they are both fallible and flawed, and that's just not the case here.

Watching big, expensive adventure movies like this makes you appreciate the greatness of The Lord of the Rings, and the reason why the source material is so important. The original Clash of the Titans, with Harry Hamlin, evoked a great deal more emotion, despite its camp. Perhaps its inability to rely on special effects made it so. In this remake, while the special effects are competently done, the fight scenes serve nothing but to advance to the next set piece, and push the viewer away from the story. You're looking for a controller just as the movie is supposed to get interesting. (Clash of the Titans video game was released for PS3 on July 27, 2010)

In that, the story probably serves better as a video game than a movie. I was looking forward to this one, but so long as The Suits insist on the "necessary elements of big budget movies," and don't allow their directors some creative freedom, they'll continue to serve up schlock like this that is neither interesting nor memorable. Trust me, you'll forget it as soon as it over. And when someone asks you what you thought, you'll be left wondering why it wasn't better, because it looked so damn good.

**1/2 (out of five)

-Steve

Copyright Stephen Burns 2010

A Birthday Wish

A friend told me this encouraging story recently, about one of her cousins. He was in his mid-fifties and had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and given one year to live. He spent the year getting things ready and preparing his estate for his wife and kids, when he was informed by the doctor he had six weeks to live. He and his wife did some research, and he was offered an opportunity to try some experimental techniques in Washington. The doctors told him he had a fifty per cent chance of surviving the efforts. Amazingly, he survived the experiments. Not only did he survive, but two weeks ago received word that the cancer was completely gone. After living with the prospect of death for over a year, he had his life back.

After she told me, I couldn't stop thinking about this man, about what life would surely mean for him now that the immediate prospect of death was removed. Every day, I thought, would be a tremendous gift. We hear stories like this, and while they happen to be true, we scoff at the sappy conclusions when someone reminds us that we live under the shadow of death every day, that each one could be our last, and that all we have is a gift. And yet, it's true, isn't it? I think we resent the sentimentality of it because sometimes the people who do the reminding are so busy being happy, they make everyone around them a bit depressed. But that doesn't mean that the idea is wrong.

I think about that quite often these days, more as I get older, and especially on days like today, which happens to be my birthday. (I'm turning 23 for the 15^th time.) I like getting older, frankly. I like that I have a better feel for who I am and what the world is like. I also like that it's okay to not party all weekend (so exhausting) and that no one thinks anything of it that I like to nap, errr, now and again. It strikes me how easily we forget the important things though, even now. That a life without relationships, without love, is no life at all.

I received a note from a friend of mine today that brought tears to my eyes. She was so kind and so encouraging, her note left me speechless. But it was the kind of thing she always does for others, and so consistent with her character. My life would be considerably less without her friendship. But then, that was true of so many people in my life. If you would have told me four years ago or eight years ago that I would be happily married to a beautiful and brilliant woman, that I would have a number of wonderful friends who accept me for who I am, and that I would live a life where getting out of bed in the morning at 5am is a joy, I would have called you crazy. (Especially the 5am part.) That doesn't mean I am without struggles or issues, as I've documented so often on this site. But the older I get, the more treasures I see in the people around me, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

So my birthday wish then, for all of you, is to know this more deeply. To know that tomorrow is the treasure we build up today. To know that your relationships are the brick and mortar of your life, and what you do with them will determine how you live. And finally, I'd be remiss if I did not mention my deep and abiding love of God, a love that has been nurtured by many people over the past thirty years. As I've gotten older, I've become less sure about the details of my faith, the ones that seem draw so many people into arguments, when by all accounts, we should be doing the much harder work in mimicking the love God has for us.

I first started hearing about this Jewish Rabbi when I was very young. He seemed so wise. So loving. Well, that's how everyone described him at least. That was what you found in the stories, those I was confused by some of the people who said they knew this Rabbi.

These days, it can be hard to distinguish between those who follow Jesus, those who think they're Jesus and those who think only they can speak for Jesus. It's frustrating, and I completely understand why so many of my friends give religion a wide berth. But without God, my life is an empty shell. I have known him since I was a small boy. I know how that sounds, and hey, I understand if people are skeptical, especially if someone has used religion to clobber you and hurt you. But it doesn't mean that I can deny the role God has played in my life. He has given me so many blessings, but more than that, his persistent love pushes me towards people when I don't feel like loving, and pushes me towards a mirror when I need to rethink some things, and when I'm alone, he's there with me. And that, I think, is the greatest thing of all about getting older. The older I get, the less I know. The less I know, the more I see. And the more I see, the more I realize that to exist without the presence of God would be the greatest loss of them all.

-Steve

NOTE: Why not send an encouraging note to someone today. Perhaps an old friend or family member you haven't talked to in a while. Trust me, you won't regret it.