Jean-Marc Vallée
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Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition attempts to update American Beauty ’s precarious mix of satire and wish fulfillment for the post-Recession era, complete with quirky voice-over, fantasy sequences, a soundtrack of generational-nostalgia signifiers and classic rock, and a WASP protagonist who shows his disaffection with privilege by applying for a working-class job and befriending gay men and surly teenagers, here merged into a single character.
This is not an entirely fair criticism of Demolition, for stories of mid-life crises are recycled ad nauseam (Birdman, Lost in Translation, American Beauty, Falling Down, Hannah and her Sisters, 8½, Last Tango in Paris, I could go on) and so trying to recapture the novelty such a story had is a difficulty in of itself.
The yuppie-finding-his-soul scenario is a very old and not particularly compelling one, and the fact that this film borrows elements from “ Regarding Henry ,” “ American Beauty ,” Saul Bellow’s “Herzog,” and the Jim Carrey “Liar, Liar,” for heaven’s sake, does not exactly redound to its benefit.
Vallee's attempts to fix Gyllenhaal's character as an otherworldly figure in the everyday world provides little in the face of Bryan Sipe's simplistic screenplay, which appears to believe that the likes of American Beauty are too subtle for their own good.
Comparisons to American Beauty are not uncalled for, especially when Chris Cooper is right there to reinforce them.
Chris Cooper, who plays Davis’s unhelpful father-in-law, is on hand to remind us of the superficially similar American Beauty.
It’s important to note that in the right hands, these universal themes of life, loss and overcoming obstacles can be quite moving (the last 10 minutes of “127 Hours” runs circles around most of “Wild”), they are the building blocks of most narratives, but as reduced here they are dull and uninspired.
Watching Wild, I couldn’t help but compare it to other solitary nature movies like Into the Wild and 127 Hours.
But there was no way she was letting go of the lead role in “Wild,” based on Strayed’s 2012 best-selling memoir that recalls other self-induced trials of endurance such as “ Eat Pray Love ,” “ 127 Hours ” and “Into the Wild.”
There’s a lot to be cynical about when you come across a film like Wild: it’s an absolute “Oscar bait” film all the way, from its “civilized person trapped in the wilderness vibe” (see also: 127 Hours or Into the Wild) to the fact that producer/star Reese Witherspoon snatched the non-fiction book up for a film version before the thing was even published; it claims to be about freedom from material things yet also includes frequent and irritating product placements for Snapple tea and REI camping goods; and it talks a lot about life-changing this and brilliant revelation that… but it’s mostly just talking.
Like the Danny Boyle film version of "127 Hours," "Wild" is extremely nervous about boring its audience with its protagonist's aloneness.
…like 2010's " 127 Hours " before it, focuses on a single character and their trials and travails in nature.
At the same time, Dallas Buyers Club also deserves credit for being the first Hollywood film with significant LGBTQ themes since Brokeback Mountain in 2005, and the first significant AIDS film since Philadelphia in 1993.
Woodroof’s transformation from hostile bigot to understanding, sympathetic brother to the gay community stretches back to Jonathan Demme’s twenty-year old “Philadelphia,” in which the lawyer played by Denzel Washington followed much the same emotional trajectory.
But Dallas Buyers Club shows how little Hollywood dramas about AIDS have advanced since Jonathan Demme ’s (homo)sexless, sanitized Philadelphia (1993).
It is widely believed that the Academy was sympathetic to McConaughey and Leto because the Academy usually favors actors who play people who are terminally ill (Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia" for example.)
Although the films are very different in style, there is a comparison to be made with Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia , in which Denzel Washington plays a homophobic lawyer who takes on an Aids-related unfair dismissal case, a move that brings about personal change and reconciliation.
It's been 20 years since Tom Hanks put a movie star's face on the AIDS crisis in Philadelphia.
But there was no way she was letting go of the lead role in “Wild,” based on Strayed’s 2012 best-selling memoir that recalls other self-induced trials of endurance such as “ Eat Pray Love ,” “ 127 Hours ” and “Into the Wild.”
This isn’t the one-with-self drama-queen travelogue of Eat Pray Love or the pompous one-with-nature spiritual quest of Into the Wild.
I feel roughly the same about Cheryl Strayed as I do about “Eat Pray Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert (a former magazine colleague of mine), which has to begin with the observation that I will never understand, on a personal or intimate level, what it’s like to be a woman who feels imprisoned in her own life in a female-specific trap.
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) and based on the real-life Cheryl Strayed’s memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail”, Wild is the sort of awards season film that, at first glance, might come off as little more than another story about a privileged individual who goes searching for relief from their “problems”; a grittier version of Eat Pray Love, so to speak.
It often feels like a welcome reaction to the phony gloss of “Eat Pray Love,” in which Julia Roberts traveled to exotic locales, in search of a handsome male distraction and shallow new-age platitudes.
Reminiscent of many other journey-through-the-wilderness-as-metaphor-for-life movies, Wild is part Into the Wild , part Eat Pray Love , a deliberately and delicately-crafted movie star vehicle for a lead actress who has made some less-than-admirable choices in recent years with bad rom-coms and forgettable dramas.
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
influenced Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Themes Plot
This does, after a fashion, leave Dallas Buyers Club feeling a bit mechanical and conceptual - unlike Steven Soderbergh's many games in tweaking star personae (Magic Mike is a key example, though the film mostly calls to mind Erin Brockovich ), it doesn't really thrive as an entertaining, involving movie beyond that leading role, and its worst parts are all bunched up at the end, which makes it hard to feel great about it on the way out.
And, of course, the little-guy-against-the-system aspect of the narrative is an age-old device—one need only think of “Erin Brockovich,” for example.
The lively, surprising script, by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, goes through occasional stages of schematic drama—shades of " Erin Brockovich "—that make Ron's adversaries more rigid than they may have been.
Elements of "Lorenzo's Oil," "Erin Brockovich" and "Monster" — for which Charlize Theron underwent a similar transformation and won an Oscar — salt the film by Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée.
It’s a weightier version of “Erin Brockovich,” but without the kind of bold artistic choices that the heaviness of the story suggests.
It most closely follows the Erin Brockovich pattern, while simultaneously drawing on familiar prestige staples from Philadelphia to Schindler’s List .
Although the title and the idea of someone going back to nature might remind audiences of 2007's Into the Wild , the two stories could not be more different thematically.
The film has unmistakable parallels to Sean Penn’s movie, Into the Wild, and if this story is ultimately more uplifting, we always feel that Cheryl Strayed is just a few beats away from catastrophe.
I kept thinking of Into the Wild , Sean Penn's film about Christopher McCandless and his ultimately tragic ramble across the West.
Sean Penn's Into the Wild made his convert to nature saintly, but flawed humanity matters here.
At first glance, “Wild” invites some obvious comparisons to other movies about reckless risk and solitary treks — Sean Penn’s masterful “ Into the Wild ,” Emilio Estevez’s “ The Way ,” about the Camino de Santiago, and this year’s “Tracks,” in which Mia Wasikowska starred as a figure similar to Strayed, a woman walking across Australia to exorcise her demons.
I remember asking that same question during Into The Wild, a similar tale of self-discovery released back in 2007.
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (“Dallas Buyers Club”) from a screenplay by novelist Nick Hornby, the 1995-set film is an episodic outdoor solo trek in the vein of “Into the Wild” and the recent “Tracks.”
It’s reminiscent of two other recent films, “Into the Wild” and “Tracks.”
Back in September, Mia Wasikowska starred in Tracks , an adaptation of Robyn Davidson’s memoir about her solo trek across the Australian desert in 1977.
Wild is the third movie to be released this year about a woman who goes solo walkabout; there was also Tracks, based on another desert-hike memoir, and the underseen Redwood Highway.
Still, the film could face some competition from John Curran’s equally accomplished “Tracks” (set to open Sept. 19 Stateside), this year’s other adaptation of a bestselling woman-in-the-wilderness memoir, and it remains to be seen whether it can improve on the modest commercial performance of films like “Into the Wild,” “127 Hours” and “All Is Lost.”
One of the things that make Cheryl more complicated and compelling than the heroine of “Tracks” (this year’s earlier woman-schlepping-across-the-desert movie) is that, along the trail, she experiences every encounter with men as fraught with erotic possibility—or trepidation.
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Directed by Bob Rafelson
influenced Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Demolition (2016)
Characters Themes
But Demolition plays like a failed iteration of a 1970s angry-misfit movie (think Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces), not like the real thing.
The director Jean-Marc Vallée, previously best known to British audiences for the pallid, Julian Fellowes-scripted costume drama The Young Victoria (2009), brings a grittiness and morbid humour to the storytelling here that, early on, evokes memories of Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces.
Reminiscent of earlier parables of nonconformity in which professional men in midlife crises “drop out” or are saved by lovable “kooks,” it’s like a nightmare combination of A Thousand Clowns and Petulia.
If Fight Club and Ordinary People had a baby, it would be like Demolition—but better.
Davis’ mid-life crisis recalls American Beauty and Fight Club (“I am Davis’ sense of resentment”), especially as his letters begin to include wide-eyed, inane observations about the world.
Demolition is first and foremost a movie about grief, and how everyone deals with it in different ways, but it’s as unconventional as you can get, with a dark comic tone that mirrors something like Fight Club or American Psycho.
Demolition is first and foremost a movie about grief, and how everyone deals with it in different ways, but it’s as unconventional as you can get, with a dark comic tone that mirrors something like Fight Club or American Psycho.
Davis’s problem is that he doesn’t feel much of anything; he’s a more functional, socialized version of Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho.”
Lorenzo's Oil (1992)
Directed by George Miller
influenced Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Plot Characters Themes
…by Walter Chaw Agreeable, well-meaning horseshit in the Lorenzo's Oil vein (but horseshittier), Jean-Marc Vallée's really bad Dallas Buyers Club is saved to some extent by a couple of fine, showy performances from a skeletal Matthew McConaughey and a skeletal Jared Leto in drag, but ultimately defeated by the standard straw-man activist biopic formula.
Elements of "Lorenzo's Oil," "Erin Brockovich" and "Monster" — for which Charlize Theron underwent a similar transformation and won an Oscar — salt the film by Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée.
It isn’t like, say, Erin Brockovich or Lorenzo’s Oil as it never goes all soft and uplifting.
The best movies that feature such stories of pilgrimage ( Into the Wild , The Way ) work so well because we care not only about the physical wellbeing of these characters, but their spiritual salvation as well.
At first glance, “Wild” invites some obvious comparisons to other movies about reckless risk and solitary treks — Sean Penn’s masterful “ Into the Wild ,” Emilio Estevez’s “ The Way ,” about the Camino de Santiago, and this year’s “Tracks,” in which Mia Wasikowska starred as a figure similar to Strayed, a woman walking across Australia to exorcise her demons.
If you remember Emilio Estevez’ brilliant film, “The Way,” from a few years ago, “Wild” would be a most welcome companion piece.
A find-yourself-by-testing-yourself drama in the “Into the Wild” or “The Way” mold, “Wild” sends Cheryl (Witherspoon) on a self-imposed spirit quest to make amends for the self-inflicted damage she’s done to herself and others.
(McConaughey’s Woodroof mentions how he was inspired by “some queers up in New York” he read about in the news, by which he means the members of ACT-UP, who did much what we see Woodroof also do here; see the documentary How to Survive a Plague .)
Vallée cites the documentary How to Survive a Plague as an inspiration for the scenes in which Woodroof, Rayon, and their allies take on the FDA (and the FBI, DEA, and IRS) to create, in effect, an alternative universe.
According to the press notes, Vallée asked his cast and crew to watch How to Survive a Plague, David France’s stirring chronicle of ACT UP released last year.
For a detailed account of the Reagan administration’s slow reaction and the gay community’s fierce crusade for a cure, rent the superb 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague .
The frustrating procedural delays of the FDA during the early days of the life or death AIDS crisis have been well documented in two outstanding documentaries, 2011's "We Were Here" representing the West Coast, 2012's "How to Survive a Plague" the East.
The contemplative movie doesn’t advocate self-medication, nor does it trivialize the long and hard-fought frontline battle for effective HIV treatment in America (see last year’s brilliant doc, How to Survive a Plague) by elevating the rogue efforts of a straight guy.
The methodology they (and Vallée’s co-editor Martin Pensa) employ is a fractured editing style akin to Soderbergh’s The Limey, intercutting her point-A-to-point-B physical journey with tiny slivers of flashback, jigsaw-puzzling together how she got to where she’s at.
The movies have long dealt with the aftermath of grief, particularly grief over a lost spouse: Who can forget poor Demi Moore alone at that potter's wheel in Ghost , or teary Ryan O'Neal mooning over Ali MacGraw in Love Story ?
The yuppie-finding-his-soul scenario is a very old and not particularly compelling one, and the fact that this film borrows elements from “ Regarding Henry ,” “ American Beauty ,” Saul Bellow’s “Herzog,” and the Jim Carrey “Liar, Liar,” for heaven’s sake, does not exactly redound to its benefit.
When, in Michael Haneke’s “The Seventh Continent” (1989), a father led his family in the Davis-like destruction of their home, you knew that there could be only one conclusion.
In several ways, Nomadland successfully breaches the essence of personal spiritual awakening the adaptation of Wild (2014) was desperate to achieve, another expose focused on a woman walking through perseverant isolation to reclaim herself.
From Janet Leigh in Psycho to Tom Hanks in Cast Away to Reese Witherspoon in Wild , the reason a certain character ends up by herself or himself can vary, but they almost always feature that character doing some deep soul-searching, trying to account for what got her or him to that particular point in life.
Matthew McConaughey shed fifty pounds to play Ron Woodroof, and it is an alarming metamorphosis to rival that of Christian Bale in 2004's " The Machinist ."
Christian Bale lost 63 pounds for "The Machinist", Russell Crowe the same amount for "Body of Lies".
Robert De Niro gained 60 pounds to play the older Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Raging Bull, and Christian Bale dropped 62 pounds (from 182 to 120) for his lead in the 2004 The Machinist.
We haven't seen this kind of sacrifice for a role since Christian Bale's emaciation for "The Machinist" in 2004.
Most people remember Tom Hanks' transformation in both "Philadelphia" and "Cast Away" (in the second he gained and then lost a lot for the role) -- both of which earned him Oscar wins -- but few saw Christian Bale's far scarier looking 60-some pound lost for his role in "The Machinist."
The caliber of his performance, not to mention his Christian Bale/ The Machinist -style physical transformation (he lost 50 pounds), fulfills Oscar nomination criteria (although, considering how crowded the field is, it's a crapshoot whether he'll make the cut).