Spring Forward: A Great Movie You'll Have to Convince People to See; Same Goes for the Enchanting Art of Amalia
There's a story?Paul growing to trust and love Murph, and by extension society, ultimately absorbing some of the older man's values and becoming the well-rounded, forward-thinking person he never was before. Yet the story never comes right out and says, "Hello, folks, I'm the story." Spring Forward really only assembles itself as a linear narrative in retrospect, in much the same way that an individual life only assembles itself as a story in retrospect. Significant moments in Paul's spiritual evolution are signaled not by "and then I realized" statements, but in subtler ways?through reaction shots, surprisingly timed cuts and sometimes very soft sound effects. One sequence has Paul and Murph visiting the house of an attractive single woman named Georgia (Peri Gilpin) to remove some rotted old railroad ties from her backyard. On the way over, Paul tells Murph about a dream (visualized in bleached-out flashbacks) in which he was tempted away from a familiar path through the woods by a mysterious and benevolent dog. The dog eventually led him into a clearing; in Paul's flashback, this image ends with the faint sound of a wind chime. Later, at Georgia's house, Georgia and Paul take a liking to each other and flirt while trying to seem like they're not. She has some puppies she's trying to give away and she works hard to convince Paul to take one home. You can tell Paul, a loner since leaving prison, is wrestling with the idea of asking her out. From somewhere out back behind the house, we hear the muffled sound of a wind chime.
It's been said that 90 percent of good filmmaking is casting; it doesn't diminish Gilroy's achievements to say that Spring Forward proves that cliche and then some. That Beatty is terrific shouldn't surprise anybody: he's been terrific in most of the roles he's played, even when the films were bad. Beatty has perfected his own distinctive brand of silver-haired, Joe Lunchpail naturalism, and in Spring Forward his acting is about as effortless as you'll ever see from anyone. Schreiber's excellence isn't surprising, either; he's a reliable young character actor who's played everybody from a dopey cowpoke bruiser (tv's Buffalo Girls) to a maybe-maybe-not murderer (Scream) to Orson Welles (RKO 281) to Hamlet, always with conviction.
Something about the two of them together just clicks. Good acting is good listening, and both Schreiber and Beatty listen beautifully. In a sense, neither Paul nor Murph ever stops talking, because when Schreiber is talking and Beatty is listening, or vice versa, Gilroy often cuts to long closeups of the listening man's face?not the standard, "Really? You don't say?" reaction shot, but a genuine reaction shot that reveals both apparent and withheld thoughts. As the movie unfolds, we realize, to our pleasant surprise, that we've gotten to know each man so well that we can deduce what he's thinking as he listens.
There's much worth listening to. Gilroy's dialogue is realistically rather than theatrically eloquent; it contains profound thoughts that sneak up on the person who uttered the words. Murph, complaining about tv self-help gurus and their moneymaking scams, grouses, "If they really had the secret to inner peace, wouldn't they give it to you for free?" It's not all talk; some of the most eloquent moments are wordless. Toward the middle of the film, when Paul and Murph have stopped treating each other as new guy and veteran and begun treating each other like father and son, there's a fine moment during some yard work when Paul asks Murph if he's interesting in maybe going to a sweat lodge. Murph is bewildered. "You know," Paul explains, "a place for men to go and relate to other men and their sons, sweat, feel good." Silence as Murph thinks about it, then he gently kicks a soccer ball out of the frame. You don't need to be told that Murph was silenced by the "and their sons" part of Paul's sentence; his physical action suggests it. This is good acting and good writing.
Even better is a moment near the end of the film, deep into the friendship, when Paul is standing in back of a house one night, smoking a cigarette. Murph comes outside, casually reaches into Paul's jacket, removes Paul's cigarettes and bums one for himself. Paul, without missing a beat, takes out his lighter and lights his friend's cigarette. The two men stand there smoking, saying everything by not saying anything. If only more movies knew how to do that. If only more people were excited by movies that knew how to do that.
Alas, Amalia, who took a shine to Almeida, even dubbing him her "personal documentarian," died one week before the movie was finished. She would have liked this movie. Without minimizing the loneliness of stardom and the complications of the aging process, The Art of Amalia portrays the singer as a consummate professional who loved being famous, loved her fans and was sincerely dedicated, throughout her life, to exploring new facets of her talent.
The vast selection of footage, culled from newsreels and television specials, showcases Amalia's porcelain beauty and her angelic soprano voice; but it also invites meditation as pure material. Some of the tv footage consists of filmed images taken from monitors during live, black-and-white telecasts; the image, slightly decayed, preserves both the oscillations of the tv signal and the inevitable decay that afflicts film stock stored under less than perfect conditions. And yet the imperfections somehow make Amalia's face and voice seem more beautiful. Like scratches and pops on vinyl records, they remind us that humans, not machines, make records of beloved art.
These thoughts occur while rereading Rob Sabin's disgraceful Nov. 26 New York Times story, "The Movies' Digital Future Is in Sight and it Works." Jesus, did the founder of Pravda come back from the dead to write that headline? In fairness to the guy on the copy desk who came up with it, it accurately reflects the boosterish tone of Sabin's mammoth work of propaganda for the fat cats of the motion picture industry. Nobody who has any esthetic, historical, emotional or moral problems with junking film for tape gets quoted by Sabin. He'd rather fellate George Lucas, Sony Electronics and the major studios, all of whom want to switch from film to tape not because it will make movies better, but because it will help them to exert more technical and financial control over what they call "the product." Those looking for insight into how the digital future might affect the esthetic and emotional experience of moviegoing won't get any answers from Sabin. He quotes mostly people with a vested financial interest in seeing videotape, video projection and satellite-beamed distribution displace the older methods.
Godfrey's two-part critical manifesto on this same issue was a tad doomy-gloomy for my tastes; I think the look of videotape has merits, just as the look of watercolor or charcoal drawing has merits compared to, say, oil painting. But I think he's right in saying that much of the magic of movies is bound up in the texture of film?celluloid fixing and then abstracting the effects of light. The luminous qualities of celluloid?which confer beauty and intensity even on mediocre movies and bad actors?have no current equivalent on videotape. That explains why many of the recent technological developments in digital cinema?such as FilmLook editing software and the new Panavision digital system, which Lucas used to shoot the new Star Wars movie?were embraced: because they made videotape look more like film.
Let's be honest, shall we? The digital changeover is mainly about the money. In a world of digital cinema, the suits will save big bucks not having to print film, preserve film and ship film to theaters. But if you think they'll offer you more moviegoing choices, and give low-budget filmmakers a better shot at reaching a big audience, and pass their savings on to moviegoers, you better quit smoking that weed.
Even some of the people who most benefit from the filmed image?actors?are foolishly doing the digital-crazy movie industry's dirty work. At a recent press conference promoting the satellite transmission of Bounce, star Ben Affleck?whose movie star image has been enhanced and enshrined by yucky old film?happily joined his corporate masters in jumping on celluloid's freshly opened grave. The event ended with Affleck ceremoniously chucking canisters of film into a garbage can. I'd say that's the esthetic equivalent of telling your mother to go fuck herself and then pushing her down a flight of stairs.
Progress is inevitable; one of the primary rules of life is that any new technology, once invented, will be used. Period. But that doesn't mean we should confuse the inevitable movement toward change with "improvement." Half a century ago, we were told that a world full of cars would be much more convenient and sensible than one that relied upon buses, trains, streetcars and other forms of mass transportation. Remember that the next time you take a 30-minute rush hour cab ride from Union Square to the Port Authority. And the next time you see a movie projected the old-fashioned way, stare hard at the image; remember what it looked like, what it felt like. Because soon it will be gone.