Movie Box Review

FOX's new series TOUCH got off to a very good start in the ratings with a "preview" episode last week (having American Idol as a lead-in didn't hurt), and certainly indications are that it could be a solid hit when it makes its series debut on Mondays next month after Alcatraz is done for the season.  To these eyes, though, it looked to be as boneheaded a TV series as any in recent memory.

Touch was created by Tim Kring, who gave us Heroes, which became a very odd network TV phenomenon:  the hit that never really was.  Heroes started off like gangbusters, and visions of spin-offs, merchandising bonanzas and feature films danced in NBC's desperate head.  Then the show came back for a disastrous second season (remember the medieval Japanese storyline?  the multiple versions of just about every major character who kept turning up?), and it never recovered; Heroes limped along for another couple of seasons, but its downward trend was irreversible.  Touch doesn't feature super-powers per see, but it already shows clear signs of the kind of confusion and soft-minded preference for mysticism over plot logic that doomed Heroes.  

Touch brings Kiefer Sutherland back to TV, this time playing Martin Bohm, a baggage handler at JFK who manages to be as ineffably grim and determined as Jack Bauer used to be.  Martin's wife died on 9/11, and he's raising son Jake (David Mazouz) on his own.  (One of the pilot's weirder conceits is that although Martin can barely make ends meet, he and Jake live in a multi-million dollar 3-bedroom Manhattan loft because his stockbroker wife left it in trust for Jake--hopefully that included funds for yearly maintenance and property taxes.)  Jake is really the show's focal point, a magical autistic who sees the hidden, mysterious patterns in the universe but who can't or won't speak or otherwise directly communicate with other human beings--including, generally, by touch.  (He does, however, narrate the series, although mercifully not with the voice of Helen Mirren a la Glee.)   As Martin is told several times in the course of the pilot, it's his job to protect Jake and decipher the meanings of the patterns Jake finds, so as to save whoever is due for rescue that week.

To call the plot of Touch convoluted and contrived is less an insult than a factual description.  In the pilot, Jake fixates on numbers that reveal a trail to 9/11 and the fireman who discovered his mother in the World Trade Center, a winning lottery ticket, a phone booth in Grand Central Station, a missed train, a school bus crash, and the miraculous saving of its passengers.  A B/C story that doesn't seem directly related to Jake similarly unites the British parents of a dead child, a Baghdad boy who aspires to be Chris Rock but whose search to find a pizza oven for his father forces him to become an unwilling suicide bomber, an Irish amateur singer who's also a helpful cell phone carrier employee, and Japanese prostitutes.  Note:  I didn't make any of that up.

Touch is sort of an Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu movie (Babel, 21 Grams) for dummies--intercontinental strands of story forced into unconvincing connections.  All Touch has is plot, because with Jake not communicating and Martin mostly spitting out intense pronouncements through gritted teeth, there's nothing in the way of characterization.  The only other substantial regular character is Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Jake's social worker, who's briefly officious but who, by the time the pilot is over, has already acknowledged and embraced Jake's strange powers.  (Since Danny Glover is listed as a regular, one assume that in future episodes, his single scene as a sort-of scientist who appreciates Jake's abilities will be expanded.) 

The Touch pilot was directed by Francis Lawrence, whose feature films include I Am Legend and Water For Elephants, so it's certainly slick enough, but it has no substance beyond its glib New Agey everything-is-connected message.  Perhaps the Highway to Heaven-plus-autism formula will connect to audiences for years to come; for some of us, though, the overblown daffiness of the enterprise severs the connection from the start.

Here's a quick primer in Oscar rules and how studios can get around them.  In order for a film to be Oscar-eligible (other than in a few special categories like Documentary and Foreign Film), it needs a theatrical release in the LA area for at least 7 days before it's available on any other platform, like VOD or homevideo.  The Academy insists on this because they don't want to become the Emmys, giving awards to productions that are primarily made for television.  All well and good.  But over the last few years, the distribution model for independent films has changed greatly, and indie studios like Magnolia and IFC, among others, routinely release their films simultaneously in a limited theatrical run and on VOD (maximizing the value of their marketing efforts, among other things).  Technically, films released that way are not eligible for Academy Awards.

So, what to do?  The loophole in the rule turns out to be that word "area," and the fact that there are no other specific rules for the initial release.  Studios can thus have a token run in a single theatre somewhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles, with no advertising and no screenings for critics, just to obtain Oscar eligibility--and then really open the film months down the road.

All of which explains why I schlepped out to join a few dozen other maniacs at the Laemmle theatre in West Hills, CA (about 25 miles from downtown LA), where Magnolia is barely releasing Lars Von Trier's MELANCHOLIA for an under-the-radar 7 day run that will end on Thursday July 28.  (Just to discourage prospective audiences even more, the film only runs once per day, in midafternoon.)   The film will soon be in more deluxe surroundings:  the Toronto Film Festival announced its inclusion yesterday, and it's already won the Best Actress award for star Kirsten Dunst at Cannes.  (This was after Von Trier, not known for his tact, indulged in some ill-advised sarcasm on the subject of Adolf Hitler at a post-screening press conference, causing an international furor and rendering him "persona non grata" at the festival.)

After all that, you ask, how is the movie?  Absorbing and--if you have a high tolerance for European art-film pretentiousness--worthwhile, but even by Von Trier's standards, a tough sit.  Think of it as the profoundly depressing other side of Another Earth's coin:  as in that film, a previously unknown planet is discovered and is approaching Earth, but while that prospect is greeted with hope and wonder in Another Earth, here it's the cause for dread and acknowledgement of inevitable death.  (Not really a spoiler, since the destruction of the planet is the film's dreamy opening sequence.)

Once the end of the world has been established, the film is divided into 2 parts, each named for one of the sisters at its center.  The first half takes place at the grand wedding reception for Justine (Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Sarsgard), which is being hosted by John (Kiefer Sutherland), the fabulously rich husband of Justine's sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg)--their estate has an 18-hole golf course, among other things.  The party begins festively enough, but tensions are everywhere--between Justine and Claire, Justine and her boss Jack (Stellan Skarsgard, Alexander's real-life father--although this being Von Trier, they have no scenes together), and between the girls' divorced parents, the irresponsible Dexter (John Hurt) and bitter Gaby (Charlotte Rampling).  More seriously, it becomes increasingly clear that Justine suffers from a severe case of the title malady, and during the course of the evening, her facade of happiness and normalcy cracks, with disastrous results.

The second half of the story is still at the estate, but all the supporting characters are gone:  Justine has suffered a complete breakdown, and she comes to stay with Justine and John and their young son.  Meanwhile, the newly-discovered planet, which turns out to have the none-too-subtle same name as Justine's mental state, is coming closer to its catastrophic collision with Earth, and everyone is either pretending not to believe it's going to happen, or accepting oncoming death with something like calm satisfaction. 

Some would say Von Trier is as much a cinematic provocateur as he is a filmmaker:  he was at the forefront of the "Dogme" movement that abolished use of background music and artificial light in its films, among other strict rules (not that his own movies often followed them); later projects included the dark musical Dancer In the Dark with Bjork; the surreal miniseries The Kingdom; The Idiots, with its mentally damaged cast members and hardcore sex; Dogville, filmed on an extremely stylized and almost empty soundstage; the racially explosive Manderlay, The Boss Of It All, shot with mechanized, pre-programmed cameras; and Antichrist, which featured explicit sexual mutilation.  So he's not the guy likely to direct the next Marvel superhero movie.  The worth of all these films are open to debate, but they're all fascinating to watch; Melancholia is less so.  After playing with super-slo-mo in the prologue sequence, Von Trier doesn't have much to contribute cinematically other than an insistently jittery hand-held video camera, which is hardly revolutionary these days.  Although the film is well crafted and edited, it's probably the least visually daring thing he's ever shot.

Melancholia continues the mood of grief and psychological violence that marked Antichrist (but without the stomach-turning carnage).  While it's tempting to say somebody should buy Von Trier a box of Cracker Jacks and a DVR Season Pass for Modern Family, there are passages in Melancholia that are emotionally powerful.  Dunst gives a strong, well-thought performance, especially in the first half, as she's dragged inextricably down into the pit of her own disorder, and Gainsbourg, no stranger to art-house misery, brings fresh anguish to the film's second half.  The movie doesn't really go anywhere--it's like a much more pretentious version of Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, where the characters waited to be engulfed by the nuclear clouds that would kill them--but it has respect for its character's despair.

Notwithstanding Magnolia's clever maneuvers, it's doubtful Melancholia will have much of a presence in the Oscar race.  The only real possibility is Dunst's performance, and the fact that her character is deemphasized in the second half doesn't help; also, how many Academy members are likely to watch all 136 minutes of this exercise in doomsday depression?  If the studio gets its hopes up, the film's title is likely to be their mood when the year's nominations are announced.