Tag Archives: Jesse Eisenberg

Short Takes

16 Nov

“Memoir of a Snail” and “A Real Pain”

‘Memoir of a Snail’ (2024)

Not a claymation curio for the whole family, nor a sequel to “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” (2021). No, this very dark and adult animated tale of twins separated after the death of their father and placed in foster care has edgy, plot-driving incursions into swinging, fat feeding, pyromania and religious zealotry. The film is wickedly funny at times but tenderly bittersweet, with deeply realized characters. The casting, an inspired all-star slate from Down Under,  pairs “Succession” star Sarah Snook and Kodi Smit-McPhee (“Power of the Dog”) as Grace and Gilbert Pudel, fraternal twins born with health issues and bullied at school. Mom died early and dad, a street performer who struggles to keep the family afloat, succumbs a few years later; Grace and Gilbert get placed with families at opposite ends of Australia. Much of the film is told through the longing letters between the two, desperate to reunite. Neither is in an ideal situation. Gilbert lives with Calvinist religious zealots who want to “pray the gay out” and abusively employ him as indentured labor on their apple orchard. Grace lives pretty much on her own in a nice house, because her absentee foster parents are swingers and darting constantly out to key parties or nudist retreats. Her bestie is an 80-year-old firecracker named Pinky (a brilliant Jacki Weaver), whose tale of how she earned the nickname and a sidebar about having sex with John Denver in a helicopter are uproarious delights. Directed by Adam Elliot, making a strong impression with his second feature, “Memoir of a Snail” is agile in construct and scrumptious to behold – “The Nightmare Before Christmas” good. The “shell” theme about the personal baggage we all carry around with us and how we withdraw or put up walls is a bit thinly etched, but the movie’s sibling bond is strongly felt. It’s like the dark, loving embrace of Tim Burton done with the edgy verve of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It’s also one of the best films you can see in a theater now.

‘A Real Pain’ (2024)

Another film featuring a “Succession” star (in addition to Sarah Snook in “Memoir of a Snail” and “The Apprentice,” starring Jeremy Strong in an Oscar-worthy turn, now on Amazon Prime). Kieran Culkin stars opposite Jessie Eisenberg (“The Social Network”) as Benji to his David, cousins who sojourn to Poland to visit the house their Holocaust-surviving grandmother lived in and connect with their Jewish roots. The two are cut from vastly different cloths; Benji is slack, conflicted and seemingly adrift, whereas David is rooted (married, with a child) and tightly wound. We never get the full details of their stateside profiles, but they don’t much matter and you can fill in the blanks easily given their dynamic. The pair signs onto a Holocaust tour led by an amiable guide (Will Sharpe) who, along with a survivor of the Rwandan civil war (Kurt Egyiawan) examining the toll of genocide in other parts of the world, are the only two who do not have personal, Jewish ties to Poland. In the group too is Jennifer Grey of “Dirty Dancing” fame as a middle-aged woman going through a tough divorce. Benji sidetracks the group regularly with his raffish whims – posing for photos at a statue of liberating soldiers as if part of the platoon, or requesting that the guide dig into the souls of Holocaust victims and tell their story rather than just reciting their names from a register. He becomes something of the group’s mercurial class clown, though many of his politely peevish plays are sparked by seeds of genuine emotional intelligence. He’s an amiable lost boy and clearly one subject of the film’s title. As youths, he and David used to be closer, but given time, space and the arc of life, have grown apart, so “the pain” refers also to Benji’s loneliness and the pair’s fraying over the years as well as the inherent trauma of digging into the atrocities of the past. The film, written and directed by Eisenberg, has a talky, European meandering feel to it, a bit like those Linklater films that paired Ethan Hawke with Julie Delpy – people who care deeply for each other yet who talk around a topic. Eisenberg also avoids making the Holocaust a didactic distraction with leaden exposition. It’s present in every frame, but “A Real Pain” is a character study first. Eisenberg, cutting just his second feature, does a solid job of balancing the tale with the looming shadow of world-changing events. It’s a journey of revelation and reconnection that works on the strength of authentic, awkward chemistry between its two leads.

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Resistance

31 Mar

‘Resistance’: You know mime Marcel Marceau, but this is when clowning stopped to kill Nazis

By Tom Meek

 

Resistance

Many know Marcel Marceau as one of the greatest mimes who lived, but he also was also part of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France, helping hundreds of orphaned, mostly Jewish children escape to Switzerland. His father was Jewish and as the film “Resistance” has it, none too keen of his son wanting to be like Charlie Chaplin, calling him “a useless bum who wants to be a clown but has the muscles of a ghost.” His father, a butcher, would end up being put to death in a concentration camp, and Marcel would change his last name as he and his brother joined the fight.

Jonathan Jakubowicz’s self-important film is framed with Gen. George S. Patton (Ed Harris) citing Marcel (Jesse Eisenberg) for his heroics to a crowd of U.S. soldiers after the liberation of France. It’s an awkward, out-of-place device – as is much of the film awkward. Harris, normally dead-on in his male bravado, is a mouse stepping into George C. Scott’s shoes, and Eisenberg, while game, struggles with the subtlety of mime and the nuance of an actor feigning composure under the masochistic boot of Klaus Barbie (a scene-chewing Matthias Schweighöfer, a pleasing, malevolent distraction) trying to shake down an escape plot. The film’s told with a Holocaust thriller edge, yet it never quite thrills nor enlightens, especially given the rich historical material at hand.

Just what drives Marcel – or Jakubowicz’s plot – is hard to say. He’s so enamored with Chaplin and breaking out as a performer, it’s hard to know if protecting children or a way of life is more important. Then there’s the sullen but determined Emma (French actress Clémence Poésy), who’s in on the cause and a romantic interest; many of these seeds never fully sprout, leaving the realization of Marceau and his legacy as something of a muddled miss.

Jakubowicz’s choice of title is austere but irrelevant. Yes, Marceau served in the Resistance, but the movement and his time in it are not the film’s major thrust, making it another aspect of the film that raises more questions than it ever answers. One of the very best films (if I may suggest) about the French Resistance is Jean-Pierre Melville’s dark and daunting “Army of Shadows” (1968). Due to the famous May 1968 civil rebellion against the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, the film, with its favorable portrayal of de Gaulle, was not widely embraced; it didn’t get a theatrical release in the United States until 2007. It’s well worth seeking out.

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The Art of Self Defense

18 Jul

‘The Art of Self Defense’: He won’t be a victim, but sensei pushes a principle to the extreme

 

By Tom Meek 
Image result for art of self defense images

“The Art of Self Defense” is a stunning little film that comes at you like a well-placed sternum punch in a dark alleyway. It begins with a droll, grim whimper as a wimpy nebbish gets viciously mugged by a gang of motorcycle thugs and subsequently waltzes into a dojo to allay his mounting fear. The set-up feels ripe for something of a comedic “Revenge of the Nerds” payback scheme, but “Self Defense,” directed by Riley Stearns (“Faults”) veers off into areas as shocking and black as such recent needle-in-your-eye edgy fare as “Midsommar” and “Under the Silver Lake.”

Casey, the self-suppressed office wonk on the receiving end of that beatdown (Jesse Eisenberg, in a role that seems tailor made), lives mostly for the affection of his demurring dachshund. The trauma of the event (he’s hospitalized) shakes him, and a chance venture into a martial arts studio sparks a meteoric transformation. The dojo’s owner, known simply as Sensei (a deadpan Alessandro Nivola) gets him on the hook with the cool, casual promise of confidence and control – you’ve gotta learn to punch with your feet. Sure, early encounters with bullies at a shopping mall don’t go so well, but at Sensei’s urging, Casey taps into head-banging metal, stops coddling his pooch and learns German. There’s also that application for a handgun (the store owner who prattles on about checks, the perils of firearms around kids, stats on suicide and the chance of becoming a homicide victim being higher for gun owners than non-owners might be the most responsible merchandiser of instant death ever portrayed on film) and a cold karate chop to his boss’ Adam’s apple over an innocuous invitation to dinner. Beyond swagger, Casey’s found his inner Bronson – and he likes it.

Eventually Casey’s invited to the special late-night classes, and that’s when the film enters “Fight Club” territory. In grim, gruesome detail, faces get punched in, elbows are disjointed and there are missions to confront others on the street – and no, these are not acts of vigilante justice or something even slightly noble. It takes a while to sink in (a noggin banged repeatedly against a cast-iron object helps make the realization for you) just how doubly dark Stearns’ reality-fraying portrait of a dweeb tweaked out on a testosterone high is. 

“Self Defense” may amble along behind a sleepy indie guise, but at the corners it’s throwing jabs that keep you constantly off balance. Just as soon as you think you have it figured out, “Self Defense” grabs you in a cinematic jujitsu hold and throws you in another direction. You can’t fully right yourself – and that’s part of the fun. For some it’ll register as black comedic bliss, for others, the grim, bleak depictions will have you peering through splayed fingers. As gonzo as the film goes, it’s remarkably well composed, and Nivola and especially Eisenberg sell it perfectly. Imogen Poots reinforces the ensemble as Anna, the lone woman at the studio who, in earning her red stripe, reminds us what women have to confront in male-dominated spaces. She’s also one of the fiercest on the mat and the most compassionate off it. If there’s a message or parable to take from “Self Defense,” where “brute force” and “never back down” are mantras, it’s hard to find a humanistic application in these trying times. That said, the journey of empowerment for the meek is just, if just for that alone.

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