Tea and Sympathy (1958)

 

Vincente Minnelli's 1958 melodrama Tea and Sympathy gave the patrician British actress Deborah Kerr (The King and I) the pivotal role as provider of both the warmth and compassion referred to in the title of Robert Anderson's celebrated play.

Kerr was cast as the wife of a prep school coach (Leif Erickson, later of High Chapparal), who encourages the torment of a boy named Tom (John Kerr, no relation to Deborah), who is not one for sports, preferring the classics and the company of women.

Though Tom gets some support and "guidance" from his roommate Al (Darryl Hickman), he is pushed to the brink of self-destruction by the bullying. In one scene, she lays the responsibility squarely at the coach's feet, with the coach being the avatar for toxic masculinity, to use modern parlance.

Though 70 years old, the film still resonates, and offers safe consideration of the breadth of male identity, if not sexuality. Rendering young Tom as a sensitive, cis-gender man, who returns to the prep school years later, married and with children, no doubt rested easily with Eisenhower-era audiences. ("Thank God he's not really ... you know!")

Would the story's message be irreparably damaged if Tom grew up to be gay or bisexual or aromantic? Hard to say, but my gut tells me his coming into his own sexual identity would in no way invalidate the love he had found for the woman who offered him a safe cuppa.

The Invite

 

Olivia Wilde's The Invite is a four-character comedy of (ill)manners starring Wilde and Seth Rogan as San Francisco homemaker/artist Angela and music professor Joe and Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton as their new neighbors, therapist Piña and interior designer Hawk. The four gather over dinner for reasons that aren't altogether clear at first but we disregard once the quartet settles into an evening of discovery.

The film's spankingly good screenplay by Cesc Gay, Will McCormack and Rashida Jones rips and snorts with barbs and indignation (Angela and Hawk) and much sexy provocation (Piña and Hawk).

It is not quite true that nothing is as it first appears; in fact, the audience's likely suppositions about these couples will be on the money, I think. What is surprising is the kind of twists and turns these deliriously damaged people take over the course of their evening together.

The Invite leaves us to wonder if Sammy Cahn was right:

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell ya, brother
Ya can't have one without the other

Power and Dominance

I often return to Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) when I reflect on power and dominance.

As I posted just a few months back, the opening sequence -- which has been probed by scholars across fields and disciplines, not just film studies -- depicts a drastic evolutionary shift, caused at least in part by alien forces.

This shift involves early man's discovery of discarded animal bones as useful weapons for hunting. Rather quickly, though, these weapons are used to dominate, to threaten, and to destroy other humans. This section of the film bears the layered title "The Dawn of Man," but that language does not appear in Arthur C. Clarke's original novel. It's occurred to me that we, the descendants of these fictional "monkeymen," spend a lot of time trying to control things and people -- our environments and fortunes, family and friends, enemies and strangers. And in doing so, many of us use benign tools for purposes other than those for which they were created. We cheat and corrupt to gain advantage, to gain power. This desire for power presents itself in many ways -- from speeding and running red lights to fabricating credentials on job applications. We "pull strings" to get a relative hired or a rival fired. We plant seeds of doubt about another's capabilities or intelligence. We present ourselves as inherently good or moral, implying that those who are not like us are not. In Kubrick's film, the hominids win control over a watering hole -- a vital resource that had previously been used by all in a rudimentary pecking order. The louder and more numerous hominids drank first, then all others according to fearsomeness. But then, weaponized hominids were able to maintain control of the valuable resources, even when they were not present or in need of them. That is, until the others became weaponized, and escalation began. That is when "Dawn" became "Dusk.

Pressure

 

Anthony Maras's second feature film is the solidly assured Pressure, written by Maras and writer/actor David Haig, based on Haig's stage play of the same name.

Pressure is set in 1944 at Allied command headquarters in England, where Gen. Dwight Eisenhower (a smart and layered Brendan Fraser) is planning an enormous land, air and sea invasion of Normandy beach in France three days later. At the recommendation of Winston Churchill, Eisenhower has summoned British meteorologist Group Captain Dr. James Stagg (another wonderful job by Andrew Scott) to join his staff and coordinate the weather forecasts for June 5.

A taciturn, humorless figure, Stagg immediately rubs Eisenhower's aide Lieutenant Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon) the wrong way and locks horn with Eisenhower's trusted meterologist, Colonel Irving Crick (Chris Messina), who looks to historical records to support command's expressed goals, assuming weather consistency year after year.

In contrast, Stagg's approach is to gather as much contemporary data as possible and then propose "go" or "no go" depending on those findings.

Crick is a likeable and fun-loving cuss; Stagg is Crick's antithesis and is as abrasive as a hair shirt. It is this bold dichotomy that is the picture's core conflict and lends meaning to the double entendre in the film's one-word title.

Maras and Haig have rendered a fresh story with crucial clarity about all that was at stake in WWII. No small feat considering how much audiences know about D-Day. Maras and Haig have re-scaled to a clash between science and intuition, that, nonetheless, would have lasting, global ramifications

The Death of Robin Hood

 

Writer/director Michael Sarnoski's ruminative The Death of Robin Hood recasts the medieval legend as a meditation on the value of life and living, especially lives that were not lived well.

In this retelling, the aged Robin Hood (a by-turns brutish and stoic Hugh Jackman) is a grisly outlaw, on the run from those who want to avenge loved ones he's slaughtered over the years. He has not been taking from the rich and giving to the poor as the stories say. He's simply been taking from whoever crosses his path.

After gutting a victim's vengeful daughter (Jade Croot), Robin finds himself reunited with Little John now called Edward (Bill Skarsgård) after a skirmish leaves the bowman bandit seriously injured. Edward and his daughter Margaret (Faith Delaney) take Robin to the island priory where sister Brigid (Jodie Cromer) tends to the sick.

It is in the priory's infirmary that Robin not only heals physically but begins to assess the damage he has caused. He is befriended by a philosopher/leper (Murray Bartlett) who is hiding more than scarred flesh under his bandages and wrappings. Their exchanges add layers of thoughtful meaning to the story.

Soon Young Margaret returns to the priory, telling of her father's murder by avengers. This presents Robin with a dilemma -- does he answer his companion's death or continue down the new path he's found?

It is an interesting premise because Robin is presented as a man devoid of heroism or honor. He is feral, but not entirely without a conscience or humanity.

Sarnoski's Death of Robin Hood will reward moviegoers who enjoy films steeped in time and place (the art direction, costuming and makeup are splendid) and that capably blend contrasting visual and narrative tones.

Yes, the violence is graphic, but I think it's the quieter moments that will resonate best with patient audience members.