We’re back with our second volume with cinematographer Ken Kelsch. This time we speak with him about more of his work with Abel Ferrara including WELCOME TO NEW YORK, THE ADDICTION and retouch on BAD LIEUTENANT. We also speak with Ken about working with Eric Red on 100 FEET, his work with Stanley Tucci on BIG NIGHT and THE IMPOSTERS, and Sherry Hormann’s DESERT FLOWER. Hope you guys have as much fun listening to this as we did recording this with Ken!
SPOTLIGHT is a film that can win as many awards as possible, gain the attention and high praises of anyone who sees it, and the film would still be an understatement. What this film achieves, is something that most films never come close to; accountability. This film holds everyone accountable; from the Catholic Church, the lawyers making easy money on out of court settlements, society that has turned a blind eye, and above all – the journalists themselves.
Director and co-writer Tom McCarthy brings a subtlety masterful hand to this film. There are not any sweeping camera movements in the direction, there’s nothing that explodes from the screenplay. As wonderful as the performances are, there isn’t a scene stealer, there isn’t one juicy role for an actor to come in and show off. It is meticulously crafted by McCarthy and his GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS worthy ensemble. In a word, this film is perfection.
Michael Keaton headlines the cast as the tough Robby Robinson, whose floating Boston accent heads the Boston Globe’s investigative unit Spotlight. Keaton gives a tremendous low key performance, doubling down on his cache he had received from his brilliant turn in BIRDMAN. Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams follow behind Keaton as his two forwards, obsessively losing themselves in their quest to find the truth.
The subject matter is very hard to watch, and very hard to re-live for those affected by sex abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church, those affected by lawyers quietly arranging hush money in the shadows of the Church all the while making sure there isn’t a paper trail of court documents, and lastly, those affected by the oversite of reporters who either missed tips, or did not take them seriously. This film is not about atonement, this film is about it’s accountability to the survivors.
Peter Jackson’s dreamlike adaptation of The Lovely Bones gets unfairly beat down way too much. While I will concede that, having never read the book myself, I’ve heard it differs considerably in story, I view the film on a standalone level. And what a film. It’s an absolute stunner, on every level, from effects and casting to acting and production design. It contains elements of the subconscious and astral planes which are a huge draw in any film for me, and are visualized here spectacularly. Saoirse Ronan plays Susie Salmon, an adolescent girl barely coming into her own when she is cut down like a flower that has jus begun to bloom. Her killer, a skin crawling creep named George Harvey (Stanley Tucci) is a neighbor and well disguises his inner nature, making the search for her murderer lead to cold dead ends. Her father (an oddly cast Mark Wahlberg makes it work) doesn’t give up for a minute, tormented by not knowing what happened to his little girl. Her mother (Rachel Weisz) and grandmother (Susan Sarandon) slowly come apart at the seams from the insidious trauma that such an incident inflicts on loved ones left behind. Only her plucky sister Rose (an excellent Rose McIver) is able to find any clues which lay the blame on Harvey. She quietly scopes him out for proof of the murder, providing a scene of hair raising suspense that will leave you needing a change of pants. Meanwhile, Susie finds herself in a place beyond space and time, a dazzling purgatory filled with the sights, sounds and memories of her short life all projected through the abstract prism of the unconscious mind, and is simply the most innovative and eye opening look into the unconscious dream world of the human mind since Tarsem Singh’s The Cell. Ronan is a beacon of hope in her performance, projecting resilience frayed with the vulnerability of a young soul achingly wounded at the tragedy of her outcome, yet determind to set things right and make peace with the life she was ripped out of so soon. Tucci is flat out genius as Harvey. Gone is his usual spitfire cameraderie, giving us an empty, psychopathic shell of a human with a reptilian gaze that causes shudders all round. He’s made Harvey a truly harrowing movie villain to rank as one of the very best, and when viewed alongside other performances of his, one can scarcely comprehend his versatility, let alone believe it’s the same guy in both roles. Peter Jackson has a yearning for every project he takes on to be the longest, flashiest, most opulent vision he can conjure up, and while that sometimes causes his own masterful technique to buckle in on itself a bit, here its employed wonderfully to make the very best version of this story that anyone probably could have. He also doesn’t shy away from showing the blunt brutality of the situation, or the undeniably ugly event, which is hard to sit through yet neccesary for the arc of the story to have full impact. In the end, elements of the story both nasty and uplifting alike combine with a set of impressive visual effects and earnest acting all across the board to create a treasure of a film.
Podcasting Them Softly 