I'm currently visiting LA for Thanksgiving and so far have seen two movies (plus other movie-related attractions - maybe I'll post a separate recap later):
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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald directed by David Yates (though you could argue the credit belongs to Rowling herself). First things first: I've never read any of the Harry Potter books or seen any of the movies save the last Wizarding World installment (that's a statement of fact I make without a smidgen of smugness), and I caught this latest one on Thanksgiving evening solely because it was the only feature being screened at the TCL (
aka Grauman's) Chinese Theatre's IMAX auditorium, which my brother had assured me was the only way to experience the "real" storied movie palace*. Having said that... what a dull, awful mess.
Where to Find Them at least had the virtue of modest aspirations which made the effort diverting and comprehensible enough even for an unenthusiastic HP novice like me, but it seems that all the success has gotten to Rowling's head, leading her to bite off far more than she can chew. There are too many new characters here that I can't see anyone but the most informed devotees being able to follow, and worse yet every one of them end up serving as a prototype to advance the latest plot machination and/or magic trick. Judging by its IMDb score Grindelwald seems to have retained the loyalty of the diehards, but I gotta go with the critics on this one.
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Shoplifters by Kore-eda Hirokazu (as usual I'm following the East Asian custom of spelling the surname first). As you may know I rate Kore-eda's
Like Father, Like Son one of the greatest films of this century and hold much of his oeuvre in high regard, including his previous feature
The Third Murder which will most likely crack my top 10 films of the year (along with, off the top of my head, Schrader's
First Reformed, Eugene Jarecki's wildly ambitious doc
The King, the latest incarnation of
A Star Is Born and I'm sure more to come throughout the awards season). So it is with some regret that I say Kore-eda's new film seems to be as overrated as his last one was underrated, though the reasons for this dichotomy of reactions aren't terribly surprising.
Let's start with the first red flag: the usher introducing
Shoplifters at the ArcLight Hollywood (a nice perk I don't believe is available at other ArcLight branches, or at least I don't remember such announcements at the Bethesda, MD, location) enthused that we were about to watch this year's Palme d'or winner, ending with that oft-dubious rhetorical question "How can you go wrong?" Actually I can think of quite a few ways to go wrong with recent Palme d'or winners, starting with the fact that the last two were naked attempts to claim relevancy before an impressionable jury of rich glitterati with good intentions but bad means of tackling said relevant issues. Conjure up just about every cliche about the working class - or rather, to be fair to the subject, about
films about the working class - and soup it up with a "statement" meant to go viral both in and outside the cinematic reality and you've got Ken Loach's obnoxiously buzzy
I, Daniel Blake. And I still see no reason to rethink
my dismissal of The Square from earlier this year when I said I was waiting to hear a good reason why I should care what anybody thinks about the pretensions of the museum crowd of posturing artists, investor patrons and their brownnosers when the social issues that the film pretends to concern itself with can be and have been given more thoughtful and less self-consciously hip treatment elsewhere.
Of course we can and should expect a major filmmaker like Kore-eda to break this cycle of enslavement to fashion, and that he both succeeds and fails deserves an in-depth analysis which I can't readily provide here as it also explains both the strength and shortcoming of his art. But perhaps a few brief analogies could help. Kore-eda has often been compared to Ozu, and not without justification as both are heavily interested in family dynamics. But this analogy is inadequate for several reasons. For one thing, shrewd and graceful as he is Kore-eda has yet to show the same mastery of his craft or as singular a personal imprint as his great predecessor, and he himself has disavowed the comparison,
proclaiming more affinity with another great compatriot of his in Naruse or with fellow Palme d'or winner Loach himself. The latter connection makes some sense (the former one, OTOH, does not - suffice it to say Naruse had a deeper and more practical understanding of people and especially women while holding a darker view of humanity at large), as both Kore-eda and Loach usually use the plight of the working class as a jumping-off point, but that's where the comparison ends: Loach sees alleviation of said plight as an end in itself, while Kore-eda has bigger fish to fry and is more concerned with metaphysical matters that are outside the purview of his British colleague.
So who else fits the bill here? This may come as a surprise as most of his celebrated works feature grand themes and larger-than-life characters, but I think a better candidate for Kore-eda's soulmate is none other than Kurosawa. Perhaps this analogy feels more instinctive once you understand this about Kore-eda: his characters are less members of the working class than oddballs in oddball situations who happen to be working-class. And Kurosawa's own characters, while often of a higher social class, display the same oddball qualities which have endeared them to audiences of all backgrounds worldwide, and which were so memorably embodied by his frequent collaborator Toshiro Mifune, a volcanic personality who steals nearly all the scenes he's in.
Which brings us to what makes Kore-eda Kore-eda and Kurosawa Kurosawa: the senpai had both a strong sense of character and a wide assortment of ideas to keep his launching pads afloat, while the kohai relies almost exclusively on his ideas to manage his own springboards. So when Kore-eda is struck by a particular jolt of inspiration, as with
Like Father, Like Son or even
The Third Murder (whose atypically grim themes turned off some of the less resourceful critics), he can stand alongside nearly anybody in the business, but when he's not, as with
After the Storm or to a lesser extent
Shoplifters, he must rely on his characters to drive the story forward, which isn't as successful because he's no Dickens or Ozu who can recreate his characters in infinitely varied ways even when he's recycling them. There's nobody in
Shoplifters that you hadn't seen before in the Kore-eda universe, and while the question of where and with whom parenthood and identity begin is an interesting one he has already explored this very theme with a tighter narrative and a richer cast of characters in
Like Father, Like Son. And I'm sorry to say that given by the piecemeal editing of his latest feature even such an accomplished auteur as Kore-eda seems to be succumbing to the ravages of the smartphone age, though his fabulous way with child actors is starting to convince me he may well be the best director of children since Ozu himself.
That's by no means a thumbs-down, but you may want to temper your expectations if you're the type that judges films by their aggregated scores. Just be warned that
Shoplifters may not come to your area for a while as I see only two theaters that seem to be playing it even in LA.
*Though it's billed as "the world’s largest IMAX auditorium" the IMAX Chinese Theatre isn't really that much bigger than several other IMAX theatres I've seen firsthand (including the one at my local AMC). If it's only history or bragging rights you're after I suggest you save your $21+ on the admission and use that extra dough for a guided tour of the palace instead. Or better yet
fork up $89 for a guided-tour trifecta of the Chinese Theatre, Dolby Theatre and Warner Bros. studio (and more attractions if you can fit 'em all in one day).
