In a rush to fit in as many Oscar nominated films as possible before Sunday’s Academy Award ceremonies, I’ve been cramming a movie into every free moment I have. Today happened to be a free day. I had nothing going on. I mean I have a ton of things I should be doing but movies are far more important.
This year I will have seen more nominated films than ever before. My final tally, if everything goes as planned, leaves me only having not seen 10 films and those are mostly the short documentary, a few foreign films and The Messenger. The tragedy there is my girlfriend is to blame for that. (Well as of last Friday she’s my fiancée.) I was going to see The Messenger months ago but she told me to wait for her. But did we see it? No and now the only person nominated in one of the acting categories that I haven’t seen is Woody Harrelson. Thanks my love.
So first up is The Last Station. The film tells the story of the last days of Leo Tolstoy as he struggles to create some sort of harmony between his personal life and his philosophical ideas of how one should lead their life. The movie is really a bunch of Brits running around pretending to be Russian. They maintain their British accents, something that has always annoyed me. I give them credit though for not having Russian accents because that is even worse but I hate watching movies that ignore the fact that the characters would speak another language.
Though The Passion of the Christ is an atrocious film Mel Gibson made a ballsy choice by making all the characters speak Aramaic. Of course had that movie been about anything other than Jesus, the fact that it was in Aramaic would have scared every American away. We seem to have this aversion to reading. I know because I’m the worst reader in the world. I pretty much only read when I’m on the toilet. I don’t know why because I have a very strong passion for reading. I just don’t do it. (Sorry Black Beard). I have forgotten my point.
John McTiernan is a director that understands the importance of language in relation to the story. In The Hunt for Red October, Sean Connery and all of the other Russians begin the film speaking in their mother tongue: Russian. Then half way through the scene, the camera moves in on the lips of one of the Russian officers and the language switches to English. Essentially what McTiernan did was told us that the characters are speaking Russian but for the purposes of the film they will be speaking English.
He did it again in The 13th Warrior. In the film most everyone speaks their native languages. Antonio Banderas does speak English, which is inaccurate but when he meets the other warriors he doesn’t understand a word they are saying. Banderas’ character observes them and every now and then a word in the middle of a sentence is in English. Until eventually all of the words are in English. Then he speaks to them in broken English but the audience knows that he has learned their language and now speaks to them in that language even though we hear it as English.
I apologize for boring all of you with this silly pet peeve but it is frustrating. The Last Station is not that great. Christopher Plummer‘s performance, for which he is nominated, is not really that strong. I think he and Morgan Freeman should both give credit to their real-life counterparts for their nominations. I don’t think either actor brings life into the role but rather the true life of these characters give life to the actor’s performances.
I wish I could say something good about the movie but there’s not much to say. It’s a throwaway film. I know many of you will disagree and tell me I’m an idiot and I won’t argue that, but there is absolutely nothing memorable about this movie. It was a bore to watch and is really a bore to write about. So I’m going to move on.
The first film I watched today was Ajami. The film follows five characters Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood in Tel Aviv. Ajami is presented much like the films of Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu (Babel, Amores Perros, 21 Grams). There are multiple stories told from the perspective of multiple characters that connect in small pieces throughout the film but the audience doesn’t really understand the complete picture until the end.
Ajami explores the turbulent and shaky relationships of Christians and Muslim Arabs in Israel. It’s a powerful film. None of the actors in the film are professional and the movie was shot on location in a neighborhood much like Ajami. The film was effective at showing realistic stories set in the middle of religious tension without being preachy. Not that these two films even compare but I am thinking of Crash right now. Crash is a bullshit movie that did nothing but tell the audience exactly how to feel. A movie that had no idea what the word subtext even meant. It’s the success of garbage like that, that tells me that people will never understand or watch a great film like Ajami.
So to sum it up: The Last Station is not worth your time while Ajami can’t be missed. Watch the trailer below.
