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The King Is Dancing 
The King is Dancing
Le roi danse
Gérard Corbiau
France/Germany/Belgium, 2000, 114 minutes
Production Companies: K-Star/France 2 Cinema/MMC Independent/RTL-1/K-Dance/K2. Producer: Dominique Janne. Screenplay: Eva de Castro, Andrée Corbiau, Gérard Corbiau, Didier Decoin, from the novel Lully ou le musicien du soleil by Philippe Beaussant. Cinematography: Gérard Simon. Editors: Ludo Troch, Philippe Ravoet. Music: Jean-Baptiste Lully. Principal Cast: Benoît Magimel, Boris Terral, Tcheky Karyo, Colette Emmanuelle, Cécile Bois, Claire Keim.
Historians didn't call Louis XVI of France (Benoît Magimel) "the Sun King" for nothing, even The Beatles Abbey Road track Sun King used him as the lyrics source inspiration. He was the first modern monarch to declare himself the centre of his country's governmental universe, he was also the prototypical media darling.
After seizing power from his mother and her advisors, he gained public fame and popularised the relatively new art of ballet - by becoming a dancer himself. He simultaneously used music and theatre co-written by Moliere (excellent portrayal by Tcheky Karyo) to help glorify and streamline his own image. The King is Dancing mainly revolves around Louis' partnership with his choreographer and court musician, Jean-Baptiste Lully (Boris Terral). Corbiau liberally blends historical fact with juicy, soap-opera fiction, creating a vibrant portrait of an unstable, passionate world where music can heal and harm with equal facility.
In French with English subtitles
Minority Report 
Dir: Steven Spielberg. US. 2002. 145 mins
Prod cos: 20th Century Fox, DreamWorks Pictures, Cruise/Wagner Productions, Blue Tulip Productions
Exec prods: Gary Goldman, Ronald Shusett
Prods: Gerald R Molen, Bonnie Curtis, Walter F Parkes, Jan De Bont
Scr: Scott Frank, Jon Cohen, from a short story by Philip K Dick
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Prod des: Alex McDowell
Ed: Michael Kahn
Music: John Williams
Main cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max Von Sydow, Kathryn Morris, Tim Blake Nelson, Peter Stormare, Lois Smith
The work of the late Philip K Dick has been a fertile source for films since Ridley Scott's Blade Runner in 1982. The latest gloomy futuristic vision, from a 1956 Dick short story, is Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, which takes themes from Blade Runner, Total Recall and especially the little seen Gary Fleder-directed Impostor and stirs them up into an absorbing thriller. The end result manages to be mainstream-friendly enough - just - to guarantee blockbuster status this summer. Unlike AI: Artificial Intelligence from Spielberg last year, Minority Report pushes all the right buttons as a crowd-pleasing entertainment, while allowing the director to imagine a future in Washington DC 2054 which is decidedly despondent. Reviews already in America have been excellent, and an opening weekend take of $36m is as strong as can be expected from a new film by Spielberg - especially one starring Tom Cruise.
Will Minority Report go down as one of Spielberg's greats, however? The answer to that question is probably no. Unlike Ridley Scott, who broke so many rules in Blade Runner and foretold a future so bleak as to provoke indifference with audiences at the time, the warm-and-fuzzy Spielberg can't quite go all the way. As in AI, he refuses to end on a sour note or be shaken from the belief that family life is the core component of a healthy society. Its not sentimentality as much as optimism - a virtue to be sure, but one which doesn't sit well in this dark conceptualisation of the near future, nor with Dick's visions of an Orwellian society in which privacy is unavailable and individual happiness is cheap. Even the drug-addicted lead character is unambiguously a hero.
Those positive values will be rewarded with box office glory but are unlikely to give Minority Report the legendary status of more daring films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner. What's more, despite the superb quality of the film-making, the film doesn't feel particularly fresh.
The film spends a good third of its running time on exposition. Three psychics - called "pre-cogs" - are able to see future murders in their minds and the images of those murders are then downloaded to be analysed by an elite pre-crime unit led by Chief John Anderton (Cruise). Anderton and his team subsequently race against the clock to prevent the impending crimes and capture the hypothetical murderers. The unit's track record is impeccable and the system, currently only operational in Washington DC, is about to be employed nationwide.
Anderton is a perfect leader for the organisation. He was recruited by the creator of pre-crime Lamarr Burgess (Max Von Sydow) after the disappearance of his five year-old son, a loss from which he is unable to recover and which fuels his desire to fight crime. Less well-known is Anderton's addiction to drugs, although a Justice Department agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) is determined to expose Anderton's addiction and take his job for himself.
In fact it is Witwer whom Anderton blames when, one day, he sees visions from the pre-cogs which predict that he will murder an unknown man in 36 hours time. Desperate to prove that Witwer has set him up by planting files in the minds of the pre-cogs, Anderton goes on the run. He visits Iris Heneman (Lois Smith), the researcher who stumbled across the pre-cogs in the first place, in a greenhouse straight out of The Big Sleep (there are many allusions to film noir in the picture). From her he discovers that, in some instances, the three pre-cogs disagree and an alternate future exists for some of the perpetrators. Convinced that he has one of these alternate futures (known in the film as a "minority report"), Anderton decides to return to the pre-crime headquarters and kidnap Agatha (Samantha Morton), the most powerful of the pre-cogs who holds the key to his future.
Along the way, he stops off at black-market eye doctor Dr Solomon Eddie (Peter Stormare) to have his eyes removed and new ones inserted so that he can move around without being identified by the city's retinal scan network - a system which not only helps to identify a citizen's geographical location but also enables companies like The Gap, Bulgari, Burger King, Pepsi et al to market their products on a personal basis. In one of the film's many visual treats, Anderton is personally identified by a host of talking billboards.
Cruise is commanding as always, although the character itself is inconsistent, the level of his dependency of drugs never clearly elucidated. Standouts in the supporting cast are Morton, mesmerising as the haunted Agatha, and Smith, a hoot as the crotchety old Iris.
Spielberg's command of narrative and pacing is as assured and sophisticated as we have come to expect from him. This is despite intrusive work from two regular collaborators - Janusz Kaminski's ostentatious cinematography, all flashy desaturated colours and bleached film; and John Williams' inappropriate orchestral score. Would that the film-maker dare to change his composer for a film like this. It would be refreshing not to be told how to react courtesy of Williams' Indiana Jones-style musical bombast. But then again, maybe more sparing use of music, such as in the classic Blade Runner score by Vangelis, is another non-commercial line Spielberg is unwilling to cross.
The Pianist 
The Pianist
Director: Roman Polanski. 2002. 148 mins.
Winner of Palme d'Or Cannes Film Festival
Working from material close to his own childhood experiences in war ravaged Poland, Roman Polanski has created his most satisfying film in twenty years. Old-fashioned, stately and a little uneven, The Pianist recovers from a disappointing start to mature into a restrained and moving account of one man's war. Following an essentially passive figure as he observes the best and worst of human nature, it has much in common with Primo Levi's The Truce filmed in 1996 by Francesco Rosi and also premiered at Cannes. A slightly more commercial proposition, especially after its Cannes Palme d'Or win, The Pianist should make an impact as a prestige item in most markets especially where there is critical support for Polanski and for the powerful central performance of Adrien Brody.
Based on the true story of young Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Brody), there is an unmistakable taste of the Europudding to the early scenes of The Pianist. Played in English by a multi-national cast, it is reminiscent of Istvan Szabo's Sunshine as it focuses on Szpilman1s family and their reactions to the nightmare events unfolding around them in 1939 Warsaw. Convinced that the Nazi menace will soon be vanquished by the intervention of France, Britain and perhaps even America, the Szpilman family are representative of a Jewish population surprised and stunned by each successive humiliation that erodes their liberty and seals their fate.
Polanski methodically charts the stages by which the Jews in Poland were subdued and enslaved. We witness the casual sadism of the Nazi officers as Szpilman's father (Finlay) is punished for not showing the proper respect. The lame and crippled are made to dance for the delight of the German soldiers. An old man in a wheelchair is tossed from a building. People are gunned down in the streets as a form of sport. A ghetto is created that separates them from the wider populace.
Care is taken to show that compassion and cruelty were visible on both sides of the divide. Members of the Jewish community reached an accommodation with their oppressors and were even willing to save their own lives by forming a Jewish militia more ruthless than any of the Nazi groups. Yet, it is the intervention of one Jewish militia member that separates Szpilman from his family and saves him from the death camps.
As the focus of the film narrows to Szpilman's lone struggle to survive, it grows in dramatic intensity. Hidden away in apartments, emaciated and alone, he is not a heroic figure. Bravery resides in those who risked their lives to save him and in those Jews who finally took to the streets in the Warsaw uprisings. Dependent on the kindness of strangers and isolated for much of the second half of the film, Brody's performance comes into its own as he captures the fear and loathing of a man running out of hope. Music is his one form of sustenance and there are emotional scenes in which his hands silently glide through a piano recital he may never give again.
In the closing stages of his ordeal, he is saved by the benevolence of German officer Captain Wilm Hosenfeld (Kretschmann) whose selfless actions acknowledge the possibility of a different world in which the two men might have found common ground in their mutual love of music. Physically committed to his performance, an increasingly gaunt and bedraggled Brody makes you genuinely concerned for his health. Underplaying beautifully, he stresses the terror and vulnerability of a man who merely wished to survive.
The absence of a conventional hero at the centre of the story may limit its value in commercial terms but it does allow Polanski to present us with a witness to the unimaginable horrors of history and their devastating impact on ordinary lives. Clearly a labour of love for all concerned, it offers a recreation of wartime Warsaw that is both epic in scope and intimate in detail marking a particular triumph for cinematographer Pawel Edelman and production designer Allan Starski, an Oscar winner for Schindler's List.
Prod co: R.P Productions
Int'l sales: Studio Canal
Prod: Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde
Co-prod: Gene Gutowski
Scr: Ronald Harwood from a book by Wladyslaw Szpilman
Cinematography: Pawel Edelman
Prod des: Allan Starski
Ed: Herve De Luze
Mus: Wojciech Kilar
Main cast: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox, Ed Stoppard.
Insomnia
"You quit with these goddam-awful Sinatra
cover versions, or you will be swingin' and
I'll be winnin' - capiche?!!!"
Insomnia
Dir: Christopher Nolan. US. 2002. 117 mins.
Christopher Nolan, the promising writer-director behind Following and Memento, makes an elegant and assured transfer to big-budget, star-driven film-making with Insomnia, one of the rare Hollywood remakes of a European film which is as good as the original. Expertly crafted and eminently intelligent, Insomnia will be a sizeable hit with adult audiences seeking out a smart thriller which is intriguing, thought-provoking and genuinely suspenseful. Boosted by its haunting Alaska settings and a top-notch cast, Warner Bros (North America, France and Germany), BVI (UK, Latin America and Scandinavia) and international independents which have bought the film can look forward to a long-lasting, solid box-office performer. The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in new York last week and opens in North America on May 24.
The 1997 original, co-written by Erik Skjoldbjaerg and Nikolaj Frobenius and directed by Skjoldbjaerg, was a chilling story set in the north of Norway where the sun never sets. Effectively transposed to a small town in Alaska also cursed with perpetual daylight, the remake, courtesy of Hillary Seitz's clever screenplay, expands the story and the relationships in it while remaining faithful to its all-pervasive tone of unease.
Wally (Memento) Pfister's camera captures the splendour of the icy landscapes as LAPD detectives Will Dormer (Pacino) and his partner Hap (Donovan) arrive by helicopter to help the local sheriff's department with its investigation into the murder of a 17-year-old girl. But Nolan and Pfister quickly switch to a claustrophobic feel as the detectives land and begin their investigation in dark police stations, hotel rooms and school classrooms shielded from the oppressive sunlight outside. Dormer and Hap are also feeling the pressure since they are both under investigation by internal affairs back in LA for planting evidence in a conviction case. Dormer risks losing his reputation and his job if Hap fulfils his threats to co-operate with the inquiry for the sake of his family.
Local suspicion in the murder case has fallen on the girl's boyfriend (Jackson), an arrogant teenager who casually abused the girl and beat her the night she died, but Dormer realises that he is not guilty. When the girl's bag is found on a rocky beach, Dormer plans a trap for the real killer by making a public announcement that it is of crucial importance in the case.
Sure enough, the killer is lured out to remove the evidence and Dormer and the local police - including a smart young rookie (Swank) - lie in wait. But when the killer arrives, fog has enshrouded the beach and in the chase that ensues, Dormer accidentally kills Hap. Nervous that he will be accused of deliberately shooting him over the internal affairs investigation, Dormer pretends that the killer was responsible. Taking the gun which the killer has dropped, he swaps the bullets and no suspicion falls on him.
But the killer - local pulp novelist Walter Finch (Williams) - has seen Dormer kill his partner, and when the cop starts sniffing around Finch as a suspect he threatens to unmask him. If Dormer frames the dead girl's boyfriend for the murder, Finch will keep his secret.
All the while, Dormer is unable to sleep due to the perpetual sunlight. Finch starts to taunt him during the night and, as his insomnia becomes more extreme, the temptation to save his own skin by working with the killer becomes greater. Dormer's decision, combined with the growing suspicions of Swank, compose the tense climax. Nolan goes with a more sombre ending than Skjoldbjaerg did, but it fits the mood of the piece, a true psychological thriller.
Nolan is in masterful control of his taut narrative, while eliciting subtle and restrained performances from both Pacino and Williams, who, in the wrong hands, can both be ham-fisted. Pacino in particular is compelling as the brilliant cop struggling with his dilemma and insomnia and headed for a meltdown. Stellan Skaarsgard was dynamic in the original, but Pacino brings a more authoritative brand of world-weariness to the proceedings.
The rest of the cast, excellent to the last, pale somewhat beside Pacino. Williams and Swank are convincing, while Tierney touching as the hotel receptionist who strikes up a rapport with Dormer. Donovan, Katt, Jackson and Dooley all fine.
Prod cos: Witt-Thomas Films, Section Eight, Alcon Entertainment, Warner Bros
North American dist: Warner Bros
Int'l sales: Summit Entertainment
Prods: Paul Junger Witt, Edward L McDonnell, Broderick Johnson, Andrew A Kosove
Exec prods: George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh, Tony Thomas, Kim Roth, Charles JD Schlissel
Scr: Hillary Seitz, adapted from the screenplay by Erik Skjoldbjaerg and Nikolaj Frobenius
Cinematography: Wally Pfister
Prod des: Nathan Crowley
Ed: Dody Dorn
Music: David Julyan
Main cast: Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, Maura Tierney, Martin Donovan, Nicky Katt, Jonathan Jackson, Paul Dooley
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