Next Best?

In the summer of 2012, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was a welcome relief from the usual shoot-‘em-up, blow-‘em-up movies that fill the schedule. The story of a group of elderly Britons moving to India was charming, and a showcase for a cast full of the best British actors over the age of sixty. Now John Madden and Ol Parker, the original’s director and screenwriter respectively, have reassembled their cast, added a couple of bonuses, and brought forth a sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

The movie begins with hotel owner Sonny (Dev Patel) and his manager Muriel (Maggie Smith) on a trip to California to seek a partnership with a hotel chain run by Ty Burley (David Straitharn). Parker knows enough not to tinker with the original characters so Muriel is as opinionated and curmudgeonly as in the original movie. Her dissection of how Americans make hot tea is almost worth the movie ticket by itself, and when she’s later asked how the trip was, she responds, “I went with low expectations – I was disappointed.” Burley promises to send an inspector to check out the proposal and if they’re satisfied, he’ll invest.

The rest of the survivors of the first movie are there for Sonny’s morning roll call: Evelyn (Judi Dench), who’s pursuing a new career as a fabric purchaser; Douglas (Bill Nighy), now separated from his wife Jean (Penelope Wilton) but hopeful for a second chance at love; the amorous Marge (Celia Imrie) who is pursuing two wealthy men at the same time; rakish rogue Norman (Roland Pickup), still with Carol (Diana Hardcastle) whom he met during the first movie; and also Sonny’s fiancée, Sunaina (Tina Desai) who’s now working with him as they prepare for the wedding. Soon though, new arrivals upset the balance, including an American looking to write a novel (Richard Gere).

The main thread of the story is Sonny and Sunaina’s nuptials, which breaks the story into three acts, but wound into it is Sonny’s seeking to expand his success as an hotelier. This is a bit contrived, especially a mistaken identity subplot that has Sonny acting even more crazy than normal. Still, the machinations manage to be both funny and poignant at times. Another story line involving Norman begins as a farce but leads to a heartfelt moment. However, the rest of the film has a number of moments that sparkle like diamonds. It’s like sitting in for a master class on film acting taught by consummate professionals. Even though he has only two short scenes, Straitharn matches the rest of the cast with a memorable characterization that etches itself into your memory.

The movie also benefits from being in turn laugh-out-loud funny and get-out-your-hankies poignant. Madden and Parker trust the audience enough to leave some things implied rather than beating the audience over the head with the script, which is a pleasant difference from much of the Hollywood fare. Madden’s camera captures India beautifully, so that it feels both exotic as well as completely familiar. They do follow the convention of India cinema by having an extensive and extravagant musical dance at the end, with Dench, Gere et al participating.

In some ways the title is unfortunate, having “Second Best” as part of it. It may not be the complete delight of the original; having that lightning strike twice would be too much to ask for or expect. But it does come so very, very close to the first movie that fans of the original will not be disappointed.

A Graceful Story

One of the blessings of Academy Awards is that films that had completed their run will be re-released to take advantage of the Oscar publicity. This year 12 Years A Slave was brought back after it won best picture so more people could see it, and Dallas Buyer’s Club went from limited release to wide thanks to Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto’s winning performances. One other film that made it into wider circulation, even though it was shut out on Oscar night, was Philomena.

The movie is based on “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee,” a book by Martin Sixsmith. Sixsmith had been a foreign correspondent for the BBC in both Russia and the United States before becoming Director of Communications for the Labour government of Tony Blair in the late 1990s. In 2002, he became embroiled in a scandal at the Ministry of Transportation when he sent an email to the Minister in charge, criticizing the department for releasing bad news in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to bury it under the larger story. The email was edited and leaked to embarrass the minister, and the government in response tried to “resign” Sixsmith. Eventually they would be forced to publically apologize to Sixsmith for their actions.

When the story begins, though, that apology is nowhere on the horizon. Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) isn’t quite sure what to do with himself in the wake of his forced resignation. At the same time he’s come to doubt his religion, so there’s no solace for him there. When asked what he’ll do, he responds that he’s considering doing a book on Russia (the real Sixsmith wrote several on that country), but an editor he meets at a dinner party suggests he do a human interest story instead. Sixsmith isn’t enthusiastic as he finds them mawkish. Then Jane (Anna Maxwell Martin), who’s working as a server at the party, approaches him with a story that she’s just recently heard from her mother Philomena (Judi Dench).

When she was a teenager in Ireland, Philomena (played in flashback by Sophie Kennedy Clark) had gotten pregnant by a lad she met at a carnival. When he learned a baby was on the way, her father basically gave her to the Church so they could deal with it. Girls in that condition became indentured servants to the nuns for four years to pay for their child’s delivery, often working in commercial laundries at the abbey that provided income for the sisterhood. Philomena went to Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Ireland, and endured a breech birth, during which one of the nuns piously says it’s her punishment for her sins. While working for the sisters, she was allowed to see her son, whom she named Anthony, for an hour a week. But one of the conditions imposed on the girls was they had to sign away their parental rights. When Anthony was about two he was adopted, and Philomena never saw him again. All she had left was a picture of him. Philomena became a nurse after she left the abbey and had another family, but she always wondered what happened to Anthony. When Jane comes upon her mother looking at the picture on Anthony’s 50^th birthday, Philomena tells her the story of her lost half-brother.

Sixsmith meets Philomena, whose guileless graciousness begins to win him over. They travel to Roscrea to meet with the sisters now in charge of Sean Ross Abbey. Philomena had contacted them several times before, trying to find Anthony, but the sisters explain the adoption records for the Abbey were lost in a fire. Sixsmith finds there’s more to that story, and a lead sends them off in an unexpected direction.

Coogan not only stars in the movie but is one of its producers and did the screenplay adaptation along with Jeff Pope. The story takes several unexpected and heartbreaking turns – it’s recommended that you have Kleenex handy while watching it – but these are handled beautifully, without telegraphing what is to come or playing for cheap sentiment. (The movie has been criticized for some scenes that didn’t follow the actual events, though the scenes in question help provide the viewer with an emotional resolution to the story.)

Philomena was directed by Stephen Frears, who dealt with creating a story around a historic event in The Queen. Frears is excellent at letting the camera tell the story and capturing small details that speak volumes. He’s also an actor’s director who assists the performers in pulling off their performances. Of course, when your main actor is Judi Dench, you’re already assured of a consummate performance. Dench uses the softest brogue with Philomena, giving her speech the subtlest taste of Ireland. The relationship between Philomena and Sixsmith is a complicated one, and Dench and Coogan make it compelling.

But while on the surface the story is about the search for a lost child, the deeper message is one of grace triumphing over legalism. Despite being sorely used by the sisters in Roscrea, Philomena remains a devout Catholic, though hers is not the paternalistic, judgmental religion of the nuns who tormented her, but rather the grace-filled mercy of a compassionate savior. In the end her faith puts Sixsmith’s agnosticism to shame.

If you missed seeing Philomena in the theaters, I recommend that you buy or rent this stunning film. It is a story that will remain with you long after the credits have rolled.

An Escape from Escapist Fare

Summer movies usually have a few things in common – explosions, vehicle chases (be they cars, airplanes, or space ships), and enough special effects technicians to fill the phone book of a small city.  When it’s done well, such as with The Avengers or Christopher Nolan’s oeuvre, it can be interesting, surprising, and even have tender moments.  But too often the explosions, chases, and SF/X are about all the movie has going for it.

If you want to escape to a movie where the only vehicle excitement comes from trying to survive the roads in a foreign country and the acting is the special effects, then check out The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

To a disparate group of elderly Brits, the hotel’s ad on the internet sounds like an answer to their troubles.  Evelyn Greenslade (Judi Dench) has just lost her husband of 40 years and must sell her house to pay off debts.  Doug Ainslie (Bill Nighy), a recently retired civil servant, and his wife Jean (Penelope Wilton) had sunk their retirement savings into their daughter’s Internet business only to have the money sink out of sight.  High Court Justice Graham Dashwood (Tom Wilkinson) has abruptly retired and decided to return to India where he lived as a boy.  It was there he’d known and lost the great love of his life.  Norman Cousins (Ronald Pickup) is an aging Lothario, seeking to stay active, while Marge Hardcastle (Celia Imrie) is tired of being Grandma and wants to find romance – preferably with an exceedingly well-off gentleman.  Muriel Donnelly (Maggie Smith) is in need of a hip replacement and can get the operation in India without any delay.  The only problem for her is that there are too many Indians in India.

They all end up on the same flight out from Heathrow to Mumbai, but their connection to Jaipur is cancelled.  Dashwood slips back into the culture and makes arrangements for bus transport to the center of Jaipur and then tuk-tuks (3-wheel motorcycle taxis) to the hotel.  When they arrive they are greeted effusively by Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel), the hotel’s manager.  Sonny has great dreams for the hotel, seeing a market for people who want to outsource their retirement.  Unfortunately, the publicity he created is based on those dreams rather than reality.

Evelyn creates a blog on which she records her impressions and experiences (and through it becomes the movie’s narrator).  She also finds a job, teaching call center personnel how to talk to actual people.  Doug, who’s been emasculated by his job and his wife for years, thrives in the new culture and actively explores the city, while Jean refuses to leave the hotel.  Marge and Norman join a club to meet Mr. and Ms. Right, respectively.  Muriel has her operation but faces a long rehabilitation.  And Graham goes in search of the India he once knew, and the love he lost.  Sonny is determined to make the hotel a success so he can marry the girl he loves, Sunaina (Tena Desae), who works in the same call center where Evelyn found her job.

The movie is directed by John Madden, who also did Her Majesty Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare in Love (both with Judi Dench) as well as last year’s excellent thriller, The Debt.  Madden is wonderful at observing a scene such as Graham getting lost in his memories while coaching some street children at cricket.  Assisted by his actors, he creates gem-like moments that sparkle without flourishes or bravado.  On the Goodreads website, the source material (Those Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach) has received strong responses in both the negative and positive from readers.  However, the screenplay by Ol Parker (Imagine Me and You) has distilled all the good out of the book and put it on the screen.

Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Tom Wilkinson are incredible as always.  They can give a page-worth of exposition with a single look.  The rest of the cast is just as sterling.  Bill Nighy is poignant as his character rediscovers what it is to live.  Penelope Wilton has appeared in Shawn of the Dead and Matchpoint, though she’s probably best known for her turn as MP (later Prime Minister) Harriet Jones on Doctor Who.  Her Jean comes close to being the heavy of the piece, though she retains sympathy in the end.  Ronald Pickup has appreared in around a hundred British TV series and movies in the last 45 years, along with roles in movies such as The Mission and Never Say Never Again.  His Norman Cousins is both self-confident as well as sadly self-aware.  Celia Imrie (Bridget Jones’ Diary, Calendar Girls) is delightfully decadent in a restrained British way, while also aware that time is passing.   Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) dances on the edge of caricature yet his honesty and energy keeps Sonny from slipping over that edge.

The movie has laugh-out-loud funny times playing on the “English culture clash,” which is close to its own genre in the movies.  The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel makes it fresh with real characters that you feel for and a light touch in both the directing and writing.  This is the kind of movie that builds its audience by word of mouth.  After you see it, you’ll find yourself wanting to sing its praises.  So if you’ve heard one too many movie explosions this summer, go see this movie that tickles your funny bone while touching your heart.

Summertime Line Up

The summer movie season first began back in 1975, when Jaws made the theater the place to be in June, July and August.  Two years later, Memorial Day Weekend became the starting date of the season with the release (on May 25^th, 1977) of a little film called simply Star Wars.  Since that time summer has been the time for blockbuster movies while in the fall movies aim for Oscar gold.  There are exceptions, but that’s the general rule.

This year the season started three weeks early, with the release of The Avengers.  It’s now grossed well over a billion dollars worldwide, and become the 4^th highest grossing movie in US history.  It also capsized a Battleship and drove a stake through Dark Shadows’ heart.  This weekend, Men In Black III comes out.  Will it be more successful fighting aliens than The Avengers?  We’ll see.  For the rest of the summer, there are a number of movies I’m anxious to watch.  Let’s start with the elephant on the schedule…

The Dark Knight Rises:  After George Clooney’s major misstep with Batman and Robin, the series looked brain-dead.  Then Christopher Nolan worked his magic and resuscitated Bruce Wayne with the intelligent, inventive Batman Begins.  The second installment in his trilogy, The Dark Knight, had a complexity and depth beyond any other superhero movie to that date.  With its stellar cast and Heath Ledger’s amazing performance as the Joker, it set the bar for the genre.  Now, with The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan has added to the cast three veterans of Inception (Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Marion Cotillard) along with Anne Hathaway as an uncampy Catwoman.  Can you say two billion-dollar movies this summer?  I knew you could.

 

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel:  With a cast that includes Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson and Bill Nighy, directed by John Madden, this may be the anti-summer movie – an English comedy set in India.  Like sorbet, it could be the perfect choice for cleansing your palette.

Brave:  Only a few movies have the confidence to simply show a scene from the movie as its trailer.  Brave showed that bravery, presenting an archery contest that was magical.  This is Pixar’s first female hero after a dozen hit movies.  It looks like they’ve hit the bull’s-eye.

Prometheus:  Ridley Scott has made two science fiction movies, both of them seminal films: Blade Runner and Alien.  Now he’s made a third.  With Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender, it should be amazing.

Rock of Ages: Tom Cruise as a 1980’s hair band rocker?  This one’s a bit iffy for me.  It is based on a Broadway musical, and Cruise can surprise.  We shall see.

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World: If the world’s going to be incinerated by an asteroid, getting to spend your last hours with Steve Carell and Keira Knightley sounds like a good idea.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Man 3 destroyed the goodwill generated by the first two Tobey Maguire movies.  Watching him do his Saturday Night Fever strut along the New York City streets was truly cringe-worthy.  Now we have a reboot with Andrew Garfield wearing the red and blue tights.  The director Marc Webb has mostly done TV and video, but his one movie credit is the delightful and inventive (500) Days of Summer.  This movie also features Emma Stone (always a plus) as Gwen Stacy, and Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Uncle Ben and Aunt May.  Perhaps this is Spidey’s Batman Begins.  I hope so.

Savages:  Third time’s the charm?  Taylor Kitsch has starred in two mega-bombs in just six months, John Carter and Battleship.  He must be feeling shell shocked by now.  Here though, he’s under the direction of Oliver Stone, with a supporting cast that includes John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro, Blake Lively, and Selma Hayek.  The movie also cost only $48 million to make, a fraction of the budgets for Kitsch’s bombs.  Here’s hoping.

Neighborhood Watch:  Last year, a small-budget English film called Attack the Block made a major splash with its story of a London youth gang fighting an alien invasion.  Now Hollywood has taken the rough premise and made a comedy.  A group of volunteer crime fighters try to defeat alien invaders, with Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller and Jonah Hill saving the day.  This is another iffy one for me, but I’ll reserve judgment for now.

Ruby Sparks:  In 2006, the directing team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris made the off-off-beat and delightful Little Miss Sunshine.  Now they’re back with a story of a novelist whose character, his dream woman, comes to life.  While the Pygmalion legend goes back to the ancient Greeks, it’s still a good story, as George Bernard Shaw and Lehner & Loewe would attest.

Total Recall:  Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 over-the-top sci-fi adventure, starring Ah-nold himself, was popular.  Now Len Wiseman (Live Free or Die Hard) returns the story to its roots, Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.”  The cast (Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston, John Cho, Jessica Biel) is first rate.  Dick’s imagination is responsible for Blade Runner, The Adjustment Bureau, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly.  Going back to the source material seems like a very good plan.

The Bourne Legacy:  The original three Bournes completely remade the visual style of the spy movie, with intense action captured by handheld cameras and sharper cuts than a samurai sword.  (Casino Royale learned the new form and gave James Bond his best film in decades.)  With Matt Damon passing on a fourth movie, Universal turned to Tony Gilroy for help.  Gilroy wrote the first three movies, and he also wrote and directed Michael Clayton as well as the twisty Julia Roberts/Clive Owen industrial espionage movie, Duplicity.  Gilroy opened up the story, focusing on another assassin from the Treadstone project who goes rogue.  With Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton joining Joan Allen, David Stathairn and Albert Finney from the previous movie, this team is definitely not second-string.

Hope Springs:  Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as a married couple undergoing counseling from Steve Carell, under the direction of David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada)?  That’s enough to get me into a theater seat.

Lawless:  Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf play Prohibition-era bootleggers battling a villainous G-man played by Guy Pearce.  The story is based on a historical novel, “The Wettest County in the World,” that had a strong element of real history in it.  With Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, and Mia Wasikowska also in the movie, it’s a 100 proof cast.

The Lord and the Idol (and the Boy)

At the beginning of My Week With Marilyn, we’re told it’s a true story.  Since it’s based on a memoir, that statement should be taken with a grain of salt.  Memoirs always offer one viewpoint of the truth, so they’re subjective.  However, screenwriter Adrian Hodge has expanded the source material so that we are presented with a slice of time and get to observe the fascinating characters who passed through a moment of history while filming a fluffy romantic comedy.

The story is told through the eyes of memoirist Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), who served as the third assistant director (read go-fer) on the 1957 movie The Prince and the Showgirl.  Colin came from a distinguished family.  His father, Lord Kenneth Clark, was a noted art historian who achieved popular fame hosting the 1969 television program Civilization.  His older brother was a respected historian in his own right, and served in parliament.  Add in an uncle who was the Queen’s librarian, and you have an intimidating family of overachievers.  After college, Colin is unsure what to do.  A chance meeting with Lawrence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) at a party helps him land his job with Olivier’s production company.

They are preparing the film version of “The Sleeping Prince” which was a comedy written by one of England’s greatest dramatists, Terrence Rattigan (The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, Separate Tables).  Olivier had done the original West End stage production in 1953 with his wife, Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond).  The movie version is to star the hottest actress in the world, Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), with Monroe’s production company producing the film.  Olivier will reprise his role and direct the movie.  The title doesn’t survive the translation to film, and the movie becomes The Prince and the Showgirl.

Colin’s tasked with preparing for Marilyn’s stay in England, under the jaundiced eye of Monroe’s publicist Arthur Jacobs (Toby Jones).  At the studio, Colin takes a shine to Lucy (Emma Watson) who works in the wardrobe department.  But then Marilyn arrives, bringing along her new husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), the head of her production company Milton Greene (Dominic Cooper), and the chaos of celebrity.

Olivier’s professionalism immediately clashes with the self-indulgent Monroe.  It doesn’t help that he detests method acting, while Monroe has brought along Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), her personal acting coach and the 2^nd wife of the principle teacher and proponent of The Method in the US, Lee Strasberg.  The very first day Monroe keeps the cast waiting while she tries to “find” her character, even though they’re just reading through the script.  Marilyn does have one supportive voice in the cast in Dame Sybil Thorndyke (Judi Dench), a legendary actress who first appeared in silent films and for whom George Bernard Shaw wrote “St. Joan” in 1924.

Colin begins as a supporter of Olivier in his conflicts with Monroe, but as the movie progresses he becomes infatuated with her, and she begins to return his affection.  He ignores the warning from Milton Greene that Marilyn will love him for a week, but then she’ll pull away and forget him.

The Motion Picture Academy might as well send out the Oscar ballots with a check mark already printed beside Michelle Williams’ name.  While other actresses have done notable work this year worthy of nomination, such as Charlize Theron (Young Adult) and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), Williams submerges herself in the character of Marilyn.  Or perhaps it would be better to say the characters.  She captures all of Monroe’s sex appeal when facing the press or crowds of fans, and even sings songs such as “That Old Black Magic” in perfect Marilyn style.  Yet she convincingly portrays the private, self-conscious and fragile Marilyn.  In a telling scene, she and Colin meet a group of fans, and she refers to her public persona in the third person just before flipping a switch and becoming the Marilyn seen in newsreels.

Williams is the brightest star of the film, but there are other suns burning fiercely in the firmament.  It is fitting that Branagh plays Olivier, since early in his career he was marked as the likely successor to Olivier’s crown.  Branagh did force the comparison by beginning his movie career directing and starring in Henry V, the roles Olivier had filled in an earlier classic film.  (Olivier remained in a class by himself, having been elevated to the House of Lords; the British theater awards are named after him.)  Branagh’s career has had its fallow times, but 2011 was a very good year for him, between this role and directing the very successful adaptation of Thor.  Olivier in My Week With Marilyn is in a transition period, trying to re-energize his film career yet seeing it waning.  Branagh handles this with subtlety and restraint.

Eddie Redmayne hasn’t an easy role as Colin, since he’s the supporting orchestra for the solos played by Williams and Branagh.  He does convincingly portray a youth who becomes infatuated with and protective of Monroe, but who’s also adult enough to finally realize it can’t last.

While she has only a couple of scenes, Julia Ormond is poignant as Vivien Leigh, who sees her husband drifting away from her.  Emma Watson moves on from the Harry Potter series, portraying a beautiful but common young woman who can’t compete for Colin’s attention with a screen idol.  Judi Dench is regally delightful as Sybil Thorndyke, giving us both the grand dame of the theater as well as a gracious veteran who supports the fledgling Marilyn.

TV director Simon Curtis, directing his first movie, and his production crew perfectly capture the England of the mid-1950’s, as well as the feel for making a movie at that time.  (Watch for the scene of getting a chair for Marilyn.)  They recreate the filming of the original movie from both before and behind the camera

Seeing the movie will set off reverberations for anyone with a knowledge of stage and film history.  At one point Marilyn is upset when she reads notes Miller has made about her character.  The notes eventually became Miller’s play After The Fall.  In the movie, the making of The Prince and the Showgirl leaves Olivier disenchanted with film, and he tells Colin that he’s planning to return to the theater in a play written for him by John Osborne.  The play was The Entertainer, and it was a triumph for Olivier that revived his career.  He did a film version of the play in 1960 and received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.  He remained busy on stage and screen until his death in 1989.  Marilyn’s next project was the classic Some Like It Hot.  Sadly, she only had 5 more years to live before her death in 1962, at age 36.

Vivien Leigh and Olivier would divorce three years after the film’s release.  She’d struggled with bipolar disorder throughout her life, but it would be tuberculosis that would claim her in 1967.  Dame Sybil outlived both Monroe and Leigh, dying in 1976 at the age of 94, after a 70 year career.  Judi Dench actually knew Thorndyke in real life, having met her first backstage at the Old Vic in 1959 when Dench was performing in Romeo and Juliet.  Dench has remarked on the accuracy of Hodges’ writing in capturing Dame Sybil.

The American characters had accomplishments that aren’t referred to in the film. Milton Greene, Marilyn’s production company partner, was a world-class photographer who shot some of the iconic images of her.  Marilyn’s publicist, Arthur Jacobs, became a well-known producer, doing movies such as Dr. Doolittle, Play It Again Sam, and the original five movies in the Planet of the Apes series.  In last year’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the head of the lab is called Jacobs in a tribute to him.  Paula Strasburg survived Marilyn by only 4 years, dying in 1966 at age 55.  Her daughter, Susan Strasburg, was a popular actress and also wrote a memoir about her relationship with Marilyn, whom she called her surrogate sister.

A final note about Michelle Williams’ performance: at the end of the movie, the screen shows three classic photographs of Marilyn Monroe.  But after watching the movie, you’re not sure if the photos are of the real Marilyn or recreations with Williams.  That succinctly sums up the quality of the performance.

 

The Vacuum

When I was young, the FBI had a sterling reputation that matched its motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.  It was partially accomplished by the savvy use of the media.  1959’s The FBI Story, starring Jimmy Stewart as a stalwart agent, was regularly played on television, and you could watch the exploits of Efrem Zimbalist Jr. on The F.B.I. (“A Quinn Martin production” as the voice-over reminded us each week) between 1965 and 1974.  I even had a comic book that told the history of the agency.  Ever since the 1930’s, the face of law enforcement was J. Edgar Hoover, the head G-man from the agency’s inception to his death in May of 1972.

He died one month before the Watergate break-in that eventually lead to blowing open Hoover’s history of semi-legal to blatantly illegal actions pursuing information on politicians, rivals, and those he personally considered traitors.  Hoover understood that knowledge is power.  While Nixon had his famous enemies list, Hoover had secret files to back his up, and had no compunction against using those files to blackmail or to destroy lives.  In those days, the famous Pogo caption rang painfully true: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Now almost 40 years after Hoover’s death, Clint Eastwood has produced a biopic of Hoover.  It could be ironic that the actor who played Dirty Harry (who was at least temporarily the face of law enforcement, though it was equal parts wish fulfillment) has finally brought Hoover’s life to the screen.  Instead Eastwood gives us a warts and all portrait of Hoover that is also sympathetic to this contradictory and sad man.

The movie uses the device of having Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) dictate his biography as it jumps between the elderly Hoover and his younger self.  In a subtle illustration of Hoover’s paranoia, he dictates to a dozen different agents – no one person gets the whole story.  There are echoes of our time.  Hoover’s initial success in the Justice Department in 1919 is against terrorist bombers who attempted to hit multiple targets at the same time.  Hoover shows he’s willing to twist laws to get people he’s judged to be guilty.  His actions lead to the ouster of the Attorney General, but Hoover is appointed head of the Bureau of Investigation by the replacement AG.

Early on he meets two important people in his life.  Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) is a pool secretary at the Bureau.  After an awkward date, she becomes his personal secretary, a position she holds until Hoover’s death.  Hoover also meets and then recruits into the F.B.I. a young lawyer, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, The Social Network).  The two become lifelong companions.  But the major influence in Hoover’s life is his iron-willed mother, Anna Marie Hoover (Judi Dench).

Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) has done a commendable job distilling the essence of the man into 137 minutes.  The most scandalous charges about Hoover’s personal life are covered in the last quarter of the film, but with a sensitivity and understanding that removes the prurient quality.  It reveals Hoover as a man who could not even be honest with himself.  The quest for power leaves a vacuum in his soul.

This is one of Eastwood’s most ambitious movies, capturing the style and feel for scenes spread out over 50 years.  Eastwood not only accomplishes that task but makes the result compelling.  His output over the last eight years – Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima, Changeling, Gran Torino, Invictus – is a body of work most directors would be happy to have for a career.  Even the curious Hereafter, flawed as it is, is still watchable.

The supporting cast is excellent across the board.  Watts submerges herself in the role of Gandy, so much so you hardly recognize her.  Armie Hammer is beautifully subtle as Tolson, until Hoover and Tolson finally cross the boundary of simple friendship.  Then Hammer shows raw, undisguised, pain-filled love.  Crucial for the movie is Hoover’s relationship with his mother, and Judi Dench nails it.  One scene – you’ll know it when you see it – is an absolute tour de force.

But the movie belongs to DiCaprio.  He is on screen in almost every frame, and his embodiment of Hoover is riveting.  He even makes you think he’s Hoover’s height.

Several ideas Hoover championed have become the standard in police work, including a central collection of fingerprints and scientific crime scene investigation.  Newer innovations such as DNA sequencing and the ViCAP data base were built on the foundation created by Hoover.  Yet the egomania and narcissism that can make local officials think twice before involving the FBI is also his legacy.  Hoover was a man who collected secrets like trading cards.  It’s fitting that his own secrets are finally laid bare in this powerful character study.