Best of Black Sheep: TAKE THIS WALTZ

TAKE THIS WALTZ
Written and Directed by Sarah Polley
Starring Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby and Sarah Silverman


Geraldine: Life has a big gap in it. You don’t try to fill it like a fucking lunatic.

Canadian darling, Sarah Polley’s latest directorial effort begins with such great promise. The enigmatic, Michelle Williams, with her round face and gentle demeanor, comes in and out of focus in a quaint Toronto kitchen. The sun beams in and all you can hear is the clicking of the fan rotating in the corner and a soft folk song filling the soundtrack. It’s one of those perfect mornings; her muffins are rising slowly and the whole day awaits her. As she sinks to the floor by the oven and a man’s legs brush past her, the tone is set for a truly great film. Unfortunately, it is at this point that mouths are opened, awkwardness and discomfort come out of them and TAKE THIS WALTZ begins to step all over its own feet.

Williams plays Margot, a 29-year-old writer living in Toronto. She has been married to Lou (Seth Rogen, who continues to grow and show more depth as an actor) for six years now. The two clearly love each other but their relationship has never matured from its youthful beginnings. As a result, they resort to cutesy baby talk and childish games where they each come up with creative ways to kill the other person whenever there is potential for intimacy between them. Neither one seems to notice their relationship is stinted until Margot meets a man on Prince Edward Island, of all places, while on assignment. Daniel (the charming Luke Kirby) not only ends up sitting next to her on the plane, where Margot has the chance to spill some fairly overwrought dialogue about how she fears missing connections at airports and maybe really fears fear itself, but as it turns out, Daniel also happens to live a few doors over from her in Toronto as well. It’s crazy how life can line up like that, I mean, especially when it is being written that way.

Margot’s heart becomes torn between the love she’s known for years and the possibilities presented by something new, something potentially more adult. Ordinarily, I am drawn into every emotion Williams gives us but in TAKE THIS WALTZ, I just wanted to cut in, grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Margot is an unhappy sap, who sees her marriage to a supportive man as a true burden and who portends that the path she has taken holds her back without admitting it was of her own making or doing a single thing to change it. To watch her debate the greener grass across the street from her is an exercise in great patience as she comes off as unappreciative, immature and unaware. Granted, yes, people just like Margot exist in real life but the sympathy with which Polley demands for Margot is too much to ask and Margot never does one thing to deserve it. As far as I’m concerned, Polley can have her waltz back because I don’t want it.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

 Written by Adrian Hodges

Directed by Simon Curtis

Starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench

Marilyn Monroe: All people see is Marilyn Monroe. As soon as they realize I'm not her, they run away.

In 1956, one of the biggest stars and sex symbols the world has ever known travelled to England to make a movie with one of the world’s most respected stage actors. Somewhere in the middle of the inevitable chaos and drama that ensued, a young man named Colin Clark was embarking on his first job in the movie business. The star was Marilyn Monroe; the actor was Sir Laurence Olivier; and the movie was THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL. Clark’s budding film career never took off but his unique experience would one day become a book (“The Prince, the Showgirl and Me”), which in turn has now become a movie called, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN.

The shoot itself actually went several weeks long but when it comes to spending time with Monroe, the experience is so fleeting that it can feel like an instant that has ended long before it should. There was nothing Clark, portrayed here by fresh faced, Eddie Redmayne, could have done to prepare himself for the magnitude of Monroe’s magnetism. And as the splendid Michelle Williams demonstrates with her finely nuanced performance, there was very little Monroe could do to tame that pull either. Though Clark is just a glorified gopher on set, his innocence and honesty grab Monroe’s attention and before long she latches on to him to use as a shield from the multitude of things that frighten her in general. Her near crippling fear and anxiety in turn threatens the success of the shoot, which causes a serious rift with Sir Laurence, who is played with great exuberance by Kenneth Branagh.

Director, Simon Curtis and writer, Adrian Hodges, both relative unknowns in the world of Hollywood feature filmmaking, infuse MY WEEK WITH MARILYN with a delicate subtlety that allows for simple but sympathetic insight into the mind of the infamous starlet. Bolstered by the almost always brilliant Williams, Monroe comes across here as part frightened little girl, lost in a world she barely understands and part experienced woman, aware of her position and unafraid of abusing her power if it means alleviating her own distress temporarily. She enjoys the attention but also doesn’t know what to do with it when she has it. Most importantly, she is aware that she is more commodity now than person, yet seems more or less content to play along. This might perhaps be because she has no idea how to change the direction of her life or it might be because she no longer remembers who the real Marilyn is anymore.

BLUE VALENTINE

Written by Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne

Directed by Derek Cianfrance

Starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams

Cindy: How do you trust your feelings when they can just disappear like that?

Gramma: I think the only way to find out is to have those feelings.

When they say, “For better of for worse,” in wedding vows, I believe they are referring to BLUE VALENTINE in regards to the worse part. Novice feature filmmaker, Derek Cianfrance’s latest is a very particular snapshot of a very specific place in a relationship that far too many people know far too well. And only few of those people live to tell the tale with their wits still about them. In reality, this space is an incredibly difficult test of the mind, the spirit and the heart and every effort is usually made to avoid getting there. It is one of the darkest stages a relationship can reach but Cianfrance is not the least bit afraid of the dark.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, an indie dream couple if I’ve ever heard one before, are Dean and Cindy, a young couple with a little girl, living their married life in rural Pennsylvania. They have been together for six years but those years have been far from kind. At the moment we meet them, Dean is feeding his daughter breakfast while Cindy is getting ready for work – an ordinary morning for many a couple, I’m sure. The difference here is that this kitchen is weighted down with a crushing tension that is evident in every look given and every word spoken. She seems appalled by his every action and influence over their daughter and he seems to know it. The room is rotten with the stench of hatred.

Dean and Cindy know they don’t have much time left and decide to get a room at a cheap motel in New York City for the night in hopes of working through their issues and rekindling their romance. Their intentions are sincere but the fight is so insurmountable at times, they each struggle with their resolve. Gosling, while somewhat overwrought in his character’s intensity, must be commended for the amount of evident effort he made to make Dean real and not just a bad husband. That said, Williams is heartbreaking every moment she is on screen. Even the manner in which she clasps her fists during one of the film’s many sexual moments is emotionally devastating. Together, they genuinely feel like two people who have been oscillating between love and hate for years, so much so that it can be too much to take at times.

Cianfrance is a brave man for going to as many places of despair in BLUE VALENTINE as he does but he’s not stupid. He knows that an audience needs to breathe so he tells the entire story of their relationship in moments so that we can see that there once was a time when these two knew happiness, that there is another reason other than their daughter that they are fighting to stay together. The device is somewhat manipulative at times as its obvious point is to make us feel even worse that their relationship doesn’t seem to be salvageable. BLUE VALENTINE did make me feel pretty bad. I had been in some variation of that relationship in my life and it was hard enough to deal with then so, as fantastic as the film is in its most candid moments, I’m not sure everyone is ready to go back there again.