Review #1,032: 'Ain't Them Bodies Saints' (2013)

David Lowery's strangely-titled Ain't Them Bodies Saints doesn't just tip its hat to a bygone era of film-making, but attempts to completely recreate the heavily visual but emotionally complex work that swept through cinemas during the 1970's, especially in America. The early work of Terrence Malick is a particular inspiration here, as vast Texas fields and looming thunderclouds play as the backdrop to the doomed love-story at its centre. On top of being a love-letter to one of finest ever decades for cinema, it manages to tell a compelling, if often isolating, little story in its own right.

Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) and Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara) are two reckless young lovers. We meet them in the midst of an argument that is quickly laughed off as Ruth announces she is with child, but it doesn't take long for their passionate romance to be cut short. When Bob drags Ruth into his world of petty crime, they find themselves locked in a shoot-out with the police that ends when Ruth wounds Deputy Wheeler (Ben Foster). Bob takes the blame and is incarcerated for 25 years to life, and the two attempt to maintain their relationship through written correspondence. A few years later, Ruth learns through the lonely Wheeler that Bob has escaped from prison and is no doubt coming for her.

The film moves into more predictable territory following Bob's escape, as we follow him on his slow-burning journey across state lines, employing the assistance of friend Sweetie (Nate Parker) to help him creep gradually closer to Ruth without being detected. As Ruth struggles between longing for her true love and the realisation that running off with a now-hardened criminal may not be the best thing for her daughter, Wheeler lets his affections known. A gentle, morally-upright man respected in the community, he offers her a safe passage and undoubtedly a better life, but Ruth still finds herself drawn to the dangerous outlaw lifestyle. Her father Skerritt (Keith Carradine), having watched over Bob as a child, has a somewhat resentful sympathy for their love, and warns Bob of a group of ne'er-do-wells who arrives in town in search of him.

The cast are excellent in their roles and compliment Lowery's desire to tell an emotionally complex story with fewer words than you would expect. Affleck is at his best when he is carefully treading the line between volatile and gentle, injecting Bob with a sympathy despite his characters occasional dark turn, and Mara perfectly captures Ruth's inward struggle between comfort and danger. Yet most impressive of all is Foster, toning down his usual wide-eyed shtick and showing a softer side perhaps not seen since Six Feet Under. For all its melancholic poetic narration and tormented gazes into the distance, the film tends to betray this approach when the dialogue comes, as the character spell out their predicaments when there's no call for it. More frustratingly, Lowery keeps the mysterious aspects of his movie a bit too close to the chest, as the reasons behind the appearance of the men hunting for Bob's head is teased but left infuriatingly unexplained. A bit like the title, it is alluring but seemingly hollow.


Directed by: David Lowery
Starring: Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Keith Carradine, Nate Parker
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #230: 'Nashville' (1975)

Films with multiple storylines and an ensemble cast are commonplace nowadays, but it all stems, really, from this film - Robert Altman's formidable Nashville. Sure, there were films before that handled large casts before, but never before had a film so successfully told an overlying story using so many characters, and have their lives so delicately intertwined. These characters have full histories and complex natures, yet they are only glimpsed and suggested in short scenes that say more in two or three minutes than most films can manage in a feature length running time.

The film takes place over the course of five days in Nashville, Tennessee, and focuses around the minor and major players in the music business, and the hangers on that seem to always be around. The key characters are Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), a spangly-suited veteran singer with political ambitions, Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), a mentally unstable country music darling returning to her home town, Tom Frank (Keith Carradine), a member of a folk group trio who is trying to make it on his own and having as many woman as he can along the way, Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), a white gospel singer who is being pursued by Tom, and Del Reese (Ned Beatty), Linnea's manager husband, who seems to be oblivious to the strain on his marriage. All their lives are interconnected and are usually linked by an incident or a set-piece.

The first scene of the film sees the campaign van for Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker setting off for a tour around Nashville, and appears throughout the film. The film even climaxes at a political rally for Walker, with Hamilton and Barbara Jean both appearing on stage, and the scene brings together nearly all of the films' characters. Although I didn't get from the film that it is necessarily making any kind of political statement, it was made soon after the Watergate scandal, and was released to an America that was looking for answers. I think Nashville is making both a warm and cynical statement about the optimism and the arrogance of America, and also the confusion and the uncertainty that came with the 1970's.

Such is the beauty of Nashville. I couldn't sum up what it was about in one sentence, and couldn't describe a clear aim or message it was trying to deliver. It is a number of things, and touches a number of emotions. The real greatness is in its small moments, such as talentless and desperate aspiring country singer Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) singing to a room full of men, and then being told that she was brought there to strip; the cold detachment that Tom deals with Linnea when she reveals she can't stay any longer; the various characters who all think that Tom is singing to them in a crowded bar, as he gazes over them all to the back of the room; or the uncomfortable scene in which Barbara Jean keeps talking to an uneasy crowd rather than singing a song, as it becomes clear that she is truly losing her mind.

Nashville is one of the key films of the 1970's, and one of the finest examples of the American New Wave that emerged in that time, and produced some of the finest films to ever come out of the country. Although Altman had been around for a while at that time (he had already done the brilliant MASH (1970) and the thoroughly underrated revisionist western classic McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)), this is the film where he truly found his forte. It's been imitated endlessly, but never has a film managed to do so much with so many different stories. An absolute great, and one of the finest American films ever made.


Directed by: Robert Altman
Starring: Ned Beatty, Henry Gibson, Ronee Blakley, Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Murphy, Gwen Welles, Scott Glenn
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #159: 'Pretty Baby' (1978)

Set during the final weeks of legal prostitution in Storyville, New Orleans, the whorehouse ran by the ageing Madame Nell (Frances Faye) is quietly coming to an end. This is unknown to the employees, who are going about their work and earning their money. Ernest Bellocq (Keith Carradine), a real-life photographer who took the famous Storyville prostitute portraits, arrives and takes an special interest in the beautiful Hattie (Susan Sarandon), and her 12-year old daughter Violet (Brooke Shields). Violet is a confident, bratty and adventurous girl who is groomed to be the star attraction at the brothel by Hattie and Madame Nell. As the men queue up for Violet, Bellocq also becomes enamoured with her, and the two start a strange love affair.

For such a monstrously ugly subject, Pretty Baby is a strikingly beautiful film. The idea of child prostitution is repulsive but was a very real thing back in the 1917-era (and obviously still exists today under a much more secretive veil). It takes a very brave director to even consider tackling such a subject, and then to do it with such elegance, truth and respect. The both cosy and dank whorehouse pulses with life and realism, to the point where it feels like the film was actually filmed in the time. Minor details such as the peeling paint on the window ledges and the layers of dust on the bookshelves adds an authenticity rarely seen.

The film was extremely controversial in its day (and would still be if it was released today) for its full-frontal nudity of a 12-year old Brooke Shields. It is undoubtedly uncomfortable to watch at times, but as hard as it is to say, it is necessary to truly see who she is, and what the men want her for, which makes the whole thing even more horrific and wrong. The scene where she is carried into a room and flaunted as a virgin to rich, cigar-smoking older men who start a bidding war to take her virginity, left me cold. It is a truly powerful scene, and when we later see her naked in her youth, all fragile and undeveloped, it almost made me sick.

Shields, who is clearly not the most talented actress in the world, is genuinely brilliant here. Full of natural beauty and swaggering maturity, her character is a complex mixture of the naive, the immature, and the wise-beyond-her-years. She seems more than ready, and eager to start work, and has the natural ability to wrap a man around her little finger. Years growing up in a brothel has seemingly left her unable to feel. And when she begins her relationship with Bellocq, it is unclear if she truly loves him, or she is simply acting to get the life she desires. If you can stomach the taboo subject matter, this is a fascinating film, rich with great acting, complex characters and a smart script, handled with an individuality and grace by the great Louis Malle.


Directed by: Louis Malle
Starring: Brooke Shields, Keith Carradine, Susan Sarandon, Frances Faye
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie