Conversations with Women Before Sunrise

Few things in life are more meaningful than a meaningful conversation.

A dialog is an exchange not just of words and ideas, thoughts and feelings, but of our very selves. As we talk, closely, intimately, we actually breathe in each other.

Though I’ve enjoyed many great conversations with male friends, there’s something about conversations with women that take talk to a whole other dimension. Women are typically more communicative, start at an earlier age (therefore, have had more practice), and are usually more willing to invest the time a great conversation usually requires.

I don’t just enjoy conversations in life, but in art, as well.

Some of my favorite films, particularly romances, are little more than a guy and a girl having a conversation.

Of course, in a way, every love story is a conversation between two lovers, even classics like “The Song of Songs” and “Romeo and Juliet,” but the dialog often involves others —family, friends, even adversaries. And as good as these kinds of love stories can be, there’s something special about the stripped down, essential nature of two lovers having one long uninterrupted conversation that I find more intense, intimate, inspiring.

I’m focusing here on the magic that’s possible between a guy and a girl, but I in no way think it can only happen between a guy and a girl, or one guy and one girl. Two guys or two girls or three or five can be just as true, just as intense, just as revealing. For me, heterosexuality and monogamy are not requirements.

The two very best long-form conversations in film, the purest examples of the form, and the ones that have my highest recommendation are “Before Sunset” and “Conversations with Other Women.” These two extraordinary films take something quite ordinary—former lovers having a conversation—and elevate it to the realm of truth and art and pain and beauty and loss, and for a brief moment make us feel less alone in the world.

“Before Sunset” has the added advantage of an earlier film that shows the same two lovers in a long, uninterrupted conversation nearly a decade earlier in “Before Sunrise.” In fact, “Before Sunrise” is a great film in its own right, but I find far more depth and meaning in the older lovers and in their pain and loss and regret-tinged conversation than in that of the young, hopeful, mostly unscarred, a-little-too-removed-from-it-all, whole-life-in-front-of-them kids they were when they first met.

In both “Before Sunset” and “Conversations with Other Women,” pain and loss and disappointment suffuse the subtext and prevent the lovers from being too cool or cavalier about life or love or each other.

And in each film, the lovers converse under the looming deadline—the sun setting, a plane’s departure—of a forced parting. Far more than a dramatic device, for me, this represents how finite all our connections are, how short life itself is, how important it is to make each and every word of every conversation count.

The films remind us that we have a limited supply of words, sentences, encounters, connections. Ultima Forsan, perhaps the last—something I have written into the flesh of my arm so as not to forget—every moment, every encounter, every sentence, every single word could be our last, and soon one, in the too-near future, will be.

“Rachel Getting Married” is a Home Movie Work of Art

I often drive eighty miles over to Tallahassee to see independent and foreign films at the Regal Miracle Five movie theater on Thomasville Road. Admittedly, eighty miles is a long way to travel for a movie, but the only time I’ve ever been disappointed was the one time I arrived to discover that the Internet listing was wrong and the film I drove all that way to see wasn’t there.

The times I actually got to watch the movie I drove over for—movies such as “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” “November,” “Broken Flowers,” “You, Me, and Everyone we Know,” “The Lives of Others,” “Lonesome Jim”—I always thoroughly enjoyed them, and often left inspired.

Now, added to that list, is Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married.”

Though not as difficult to watch as “SherryBaby,” Demme’s film certainly has its painful moments—watching awkward, addicted, in-denial people interact, particularly in the disturbing dynamic of dysfunctional families can always make an audience uncomfortable.

Watching “Rachel Getting Married” is like stumbling upon the unfiltered, unedited outtakes of someone’s home movies—deleted scenes that somehow didn’t get deleted. We know we should look away, but quickly overtaken by the raw drama, we are unable to, so we stare, transfixed at the slow motion wreck unfolding in front of us.

Demme’s directing is stellar in his best film since “Silence of the Lambs,” and there are many fine performances, but this a breakout for Anne Hathaway, who takes full advantage of the amazing opportunity afforded her by the role of Kym.

When Kym (Anne Hathaway) returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister, Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt), she brings a long history of personal crisis and family conflict along with her. The wedding party’s abundant cast of friends and relations have gathered for an idyllic weekend of feasting, music and love, but Kym with her dark, tragic wit and knack for bombshell drama is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family dynamic.

Peopled with the rich and eclectic characters, “Rachel Getting Married”is insightful, perceptive, provocative, profound, and occasionally hilarious. Director Demme, first-time writer Jenny Lumet, and the stellar cast lift this lean family drama into the best of these type movies, and Demme’s best since “Silence of the Lambs.”

Inspired by Dogme 95 films such as “The Celebration” and “The Idiot,” Demme shot “Rachel Getting Married” in HD video instead of film. His goal, “The most beautiful home movie ever made.” He succeeds. “Rachel Getting Married” has the energy, spontaneity, and documentaryesque feel only video can achieve, but it also has the confidence, assurance, beauty, and performances only a skillful old filmmaker can achieve (this is Demme’s 36th film).

Of all the reasons to recommend “Rachel Getting Married” to you, number one on the list is the profoundly painful performance by Anne Hathaway. Kym is not only her best role to date, it may just be the role of a lifetime, and, as if knowing that, Ms. Hathaway embodies the broken young woman to such an extent, she disappears into her.

Go see “Rachel Getting Married” —even if you have to drive eighty miles to do so. For as highly recommended as “Rachel getting Married” is, the Regal Miracle Five is even more so.

Novelist Still a Reporter

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Michael Connelly, who began his writing career as a reporter, once again reports his way to an intricately plotted, well executed crime novel.

As I read “The Brass Verdict,” I pictured Mr. Connelly, narrow notebook and pen in hand, sitting in courtrooms, interviewing attorneys, cops, and criminals—in the LA way, of course—“Off the record, on the QT, and very hush hush.”

With the pride and preciseness of a professional reporter, Michael Connelly consistently gets it right—LA, the justice system, the courtroom, the cop shops, and most of all, the blue religion

This time out, Mr. Connelly loses his blue religion—or nearly—leaving his series detective Harry Bosch in the background in order for L.A. lawyer, Mickey Haller, last seen in “The Lincoln Lawyer” to tell the story. It’s only fair. It is, after all, Mickey’s story, but you can bet Bosch won’t stay in the background for long.
Haller inherits the practice and caseload of a fellow defense attorney, Jerry Vincent, who’s been murdered. With the practice comes the high-profile, double-homicide case against famed Hollywood producer Walter Elliot, accused of shooting his wife and her alleged lover. It’s the case of a lifetime, and it takes priority. As Haller scrambles to build a defense, he finds himself getting entangled with LAPD Detective, Harry Bosch, the inimitable hero of Connelly’s long-running series (“The Black Echo,” etc.), who’s working Vincent's murder. When Haller realizes that the Elliot affair is bigger than simply a jealous husband killing his cheating wife, he and Bosch grudgingly agree to work together to solve what could be the biggest case in both their careers. But in the process, Haller realizes Vincent’s killer may be coming after him.

“The Brass Verdict” brings together Michael Connelly’s two most popular characters, Bosh and Haller, for an entertaining legal thriller with more twists and turns that Mulholland Drive.

With obvious painstaking research and concrete details that lend credibility, Mr. Connelly writers novels that thrill and excite, but also read like true crime stories. He’s got a reporter’s ear and eye, and puts them to good use in novels only a skilled, experienced, careful reporter could write. And if “The Brass Verdict” leaves you wanting more Harry Bosch, I’d be willing to bet that’s exactly who journalist Connelly is researching and reporting about right now—so a year from now we can enjoy another of Bosch’s resonate cases.

Personal Note: Michael Connelly is a friend, and I have to say that not only is he a good writer, he’s a good guy—one of the nicest, most generous authors you’re likely to meet. Though one of the most successful crime fiction writers in the world, he spends a lot of his time supporting and encouraging other writers—even those far, far less successful (like me).

Exciting News: Michael Connelly will be the Special Keynote Speaker for the 10th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference, September 18-20, 2009. For more information, go to www.GulfCoastWritersConference.com

“Changeling” a True, True Story

There are movies. There are films. Then, there is art.

“Zack and Mira Make a Porno” is a movie. “Appaloosa” is a film. Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” is a work of art.

“Changeling” is a quiet masterpiece by a seventy-eight year-old auteur who has a least three things in common with my favorite director, Alfred Hitchcock. Both Eastwood and Hitchcock did their best work late in life (after a lifetime of good work). Both filmmakers functioned as independents within the studio system. And both enjoy commercial and critical success.

Of course, Eastwood isn’t the only artist involved in “Changeling.” Screenwriter Michael Straczynski turns in a stellar novel-like script and Angelina Jolie is beyond brilliant in an understated and deeply affecting performance.

Set in 1928 Los Angeles, “Changeling” is the story of a single mother, Christine Collins, who returns home one day to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter, missing. Several months later, Christine is told that her son has been found alive, but when Christine sees “Walter” she doesn’t recognize him. Captain Jones pressures a confused Christine into taking the boy home “on a trial basis.”

After Christine confronts Captain Jones with physical discrepancies between the little boy claiming to be”Walter” and her son, Jones orders Christine to the Los Angeles County Hospital’s psychopathic ward, and told repeatedly that if she will just admit she was mistaken about “Walter” and say the LAPD was right, she’ll be released.

What really happened to Walter Collins is later revealed. Sort of. But this powerful story is not so much about the abduction or the investigation, but the faith and fortitude of a powerless single mother in the face of the all-powerful, male-dominated, corrupt police department. It’s a reminder of how easily power is abused, and how very much accountability and checks and balances are essential to protect citizens from their government.

Heroic people abound in this story. There’s Christine Collins, of course, but there’s also the outspoken minister, Gustav Briegleb, and Detective Ybarra (Michael Kelly) who conducts the actual investigation into what happened to Walter Collins in spite of enormous pressure by Captain Jones not to do so. And, as usual, heroes are ordinary people just being decent human beings when the entire mighty rushing river of corrupt culture is pounding them, pushing them to conform, to go along to get along, to let go and just go with the flow.

The highest compliment I can give the near-perfect, perhaps even perfect, “Changeling” is that it is a true story. And I don’t just mean that is was based on real people and actual events, but that it is true in every single sense of the word. If fiction is the lie that tells the truth, then this story is the truth that tells an even deeper truth. “Changeling” is a deeply, devastatingly, powerfully, profoundly true work of art, and it doesn’t get any truer than that.