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TURRISI TAKES ON THE MOVIES

2002; Wolters Kluwer; Volume: 24; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/01.cot.0000289373.50886.d9

1548-4688

Andrew T. Turrisi,

Turkey's Politics and Society

'IGBY GOES DOWN' Starring Kieran Culkin, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon, Ryan Phillipe, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, and Amanda Peet. Written and directed by Burr Steers. Rated R, 97 minutes. Are you ready for the most somber but best attempt to portray the spirit of Holden Caulfield? There have been a plethora of efforts this year to bring Holden Caulfield back to our attention, and that might make the reclusive JD Salinger pleased to learn of The Catcher in the Rye's timelessness. I've reviewed two of those worthy efforts—Tadpole (October) and The Good Girl (November), which each pay homage or respect to the sardonic classic that helped me come of age. Of the three movies, Tadpole was much more optimistic and light, and this mood emulated the late 60s spirit of The Graduate more than the bitterness of Catcher in the Rye. We expect that Tadpole's Oscar Grubman will be OK, and that whether he pursues Voltaire or his mother, he has the resources to figure it out. The Good Girl's Holden, played by Jake Gyllenhaal as a misfit, seemed to be more about a post-adolescent with a serious maladjustment disorder. He was not so much the victim of a pathologic society or family, but more possessed by inner demons and madness that made him the darkest shadows of Holden Caulfield, with less dimension and character. Despite the claustrophobic Retail Rodeo and his emotionally constrained parents, this Holden expropriated the name but not the spirit or the goodness of Holden Caulfield. With Kieran Culkin's Igby, however, we find the most authentic Holden ever. As with the Salinger version, he finds adults to be worthy of distrust and despair—agents of hypocrisy and malediction—particularly parents. This Igby suffers quite endearingly, especially from his family, but also from his disillusionment with the world, from its betrayals, its phoniness, and from the utter lack of hope that tomorrow will bring anything better than what he has already experienced.Figure: Andrew T. Turrisi, III, MDAnd he didn't even know about Osama bin Laden, the DC Sniper, or the recent election! Not only does the world suck, but apparently it is ready to be suckered at any moment. Igby seems a magnet to misfortune, and how he absorbs these buffets and woes makes the movie a four-star effort worth seeing. 'Awful Title' The movie saddles itself with an awful title from its pessimistic first-time writer/director Burr Steers (the only other Burr I know was Burr Tillstrom, the creator of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a zany puppet dragon, a clown, and a benign woman, Fran Allison, from the early days of black-and-white TV). Last time I ran into Burr Tillstrom was at his monument in a piazza in Saugatuck, Michigan. Could our new Burr steer us wrong with this title? Mr. Steers has done a wonderful job writing and directing this movie, and we know very little about him other than his role as Roger in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. It takes half the movie to learn that our man Igby's real name isn't that; it's Jason, named after his pathetic, mentally ill father, Jason Slocumb, convincingly played by Bill Pullman. Igby comes from "Digby," a teddy bear, who was the scapegoat for all of young Jason's infantile misdeeds. In baby talk, "Digby" evolved into "Igby," and the family joke was that Igby did almost everything wrong. This family did not have many jokes either; they were dead serious into malediction and self-destruction. The pathos of a little boy constantly in trouble and already armed with a teddy bear to absorb the blame puts us on notice that he springs from no ordinary dysfunctional family—this is one of Olympic proportions. Igby is forced to become a bright-eyed cynic to survive first his family and then his life. Opening Macabre Scene The movie opens with the macabre scene of a middle-aged woman of means lying either in deep sleep or in a coma. Two young men slip a plastic bag over her snoring head. We learn that the comatose victim is Mimi Slocumb, played with venomous perfection by Susan Sarandon. Malevolent maternal figures are not common in movies or literature, but this character is a self-centered, social-climbing, anti-Semitic spider who has very little of mom or apple pie in her. We later learn that both smothering lads are her sons, and that she has suffered with breast cancer. Whether this is matricide or suicide is ambiguous until the end. The details of her treatment, and whether she was on or off study, received a taxane or not, do not enter into the plot or action, but it can count on you to make this up. The fact that she seemingly chooses to end her life, with her sons as bedside aids to her desperation may have a connecting moment for our patients wondering if ending it all is a better choice than taking arms against their disease as we are their agents of defense. Mimi's character develops through the film with scenes of cruelty and uxorious discontent. An early dinner scene has her shredding her husband to bits with her lashing tongue. He reappears stripped naked, and devoid of self-worth and standing before his wide-eyed sons. Whether he is alcoholic, depressed, or schizophrenic is in many ways irrelevant, because Mimi drives him to the safety of the loony bin. Strong Performance by Bill Pullman Bill Pullman's Jason Slocumb is mute, but expresses this destruction silently with his actions worthy of a supporting role nod from Hollywood. One of the memorable scenes is when Igby goes to see his destroyed father in the mental hospital. Mimi's maternal instincts are to create mirrors of her sons to prove she is fairest of them all. Ryan Phillipe plays Oliver, Igby's older, more Republican brother, and apple of his mommy dearest's jaundiced eye. Phillipe is the handsome husband of Reese Witherspoon in real life, and seemingly is making a career of proving that pretty is often behaving pretty awful. In this role, Ollie reflects mother's concept of perfection as an academic achiever as a student at Columbia University. Oliver is indeed his mother's son; both are self-absorbed and emotional vacuums for whom the world provides pleasure. Their cold-blooded disregard of other beings characterizes a modern ugliness that belie their physical comeliness. Ryan Phillipe also played Sebastian Valmont in Cruel Intentions, a modern version of Dangerous Liaisons, where a rich brother and sister play sexual games and have fun at the emotional expense of their classmates. Oliver's aristocratic cadence of speech is again used in Igby after perfecting it in the role of Henry Denton, Mr. Weissman's valet in Gosford Park. Ollie is utterly without scruples, and has no problems scooping little brother Igby's girlfriend, Sookie, for pleasure and sport. Heaven knows Ollie would never really marry a Jewish girl—mother would never approve. Kieran Culkin: 'Flawless Perfect Pitch' Kieran Culkin's Igby charms and performs without self-consciousness. He has developed a quick wit and a sharp cutting ability to observe in order to survive. His nuanced performance could have been too snotty or too much the victim; instead, he hits the right notes with flawless perfect pitch. You ache for him to get a life away from his arachnid-like family, which stings him at every opportunity. He's glib. He is smart. He is vulnerable and in need of the perfect girl friend. As he dodges school after being kicked out of the best on the eastern seaboard, he finds a source of cash in restoring lofts for the mysterious Uncle DH, played by Jeff Goldblum. In the same vein as Mimi and Ollie, DH is perfectly coifed in sartorial splendor, but equally heartless and the consummate user of others for his own delight. Perhaps the most selfish in this group seemingly competing for the prize, DH has a wife as well as a girlfriend installed in one of his restored lofts. He also has been more than friendly with Mimi. The New York loft contains Rachel, an artist, who supplies not only DH, but also Igby and Russell her ambiguously gendered boyfriend with her charms. Rachel, played by Amanda Peet, is alluring and credible in the part, and deconstructs as she becomes more addicted to heroin. The loft becomes a trysting place for all and a hiding place for Igby on the lam from the truant officers. DH throws a party at the Hamptons where Sookie, played gracefully and beautifully by Claire Danes, is introduced as a student from Bennington. She and Igby connect—she loves the fact that Igby makes her laugh. But soon she is more consumed by Oliver's attention than Igby's wit. Roger Ebert's review of this film suggests that all young men who make young woman laugh are in peril, because sooner or later they stop laughing and then what is there to do? "The Igby here is the most authentic Holden ever." Igby Goes Down is a tragi-comedy about how hard Igby tries to not descend to the false values of his family and compatriots. There are villains and ne'er do wells in every scene, but the cinematic triumph is that Burr Steer's script drives us to an acceptable conclusion with a surprise ending that leaves us still hoping that Igby will redeem himself rather than falling down into the pit with his relational vipers. The stand-out performances from Kieran Culkin, who also recently starred in the wonderful but ignored Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Susan Sarandon, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, and Claire Danes are not to be missed. 'BARBERSHOP' Starring Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Michael Ealy, Eve, Sean Patrick Thomas, Anthony Anderson, Leonard Howze. Written by Mark Brown. Directed by Tim Story. Rated PG-13, 102 minutes. Barbershop offers an experience foreign or at least different from most of your haircutting episodes. Do you go to a barbershop or to a hair salon? I now go, and take my girls, to an all-female barbered barbershop—no appointments, first come, first serve. Very democratic, but upside-down to my boyhood experience with barbershops and my adult experiences during the epoch when I had enough hair to worry about, and I made appointments at an upscale hair salon.FigureWhile I do not remember my first haircut, I vividly remember going to get my hair prepared when I was the ring-bearer in my aunt's 1952 wedding. A barbershop burgeons up memories, good and bad, of my younger years, not so much the actual cut, but the visuals, the tactile, and the olfactory. First the barber pole mesmerized with its spinning stripes recalling trickling blood from its medieval roots in surgical bloodletting. Also the picture-perfect haircuts on models neatly framed allowing you to point out to the barbers—in those days, universally all males—what picture you wanted emulated on your non-model scalp. The tissue paper swathed around your neck to prevent stray clipped hairs from falling down the back of your shirt—I can still feel the small stabs of my own bristles into my back. The warm lather and the straight razor cleaned up my neck and side-burns. The Mennen's Powder fragrantly dried my neck followed by the smooth bristled brush to whisk away any lingering hair or excess talc. Then there was the hair tonic, medicinal looking and fragrant, Brylcreem's "a little dab'll do ya;" Vitalis, for the cool DA perfection above or over your ears; or Wildroot's white milky staying power. I got stuck with the vaguely citron smell of O'Dell's Hair Trainer that went on wet, but dried stiff as a board to keep the pompadour in front, the parentally imposed perfection that proved a source of torment on the school bus and the awareness of the first urge to want to be cool and un-parentally controlled. Cigarettes and ashtrays were fixtures in the barbershops of my youth, before we knew that cancer sticks were evil. They were built into the arms of the barber chair, and as ubiquitous metal furnishings as ash stands throughout the shop. Cigarettes were everywhere, and my father sold them for a living, to pay every cent of tuition for my education. He also decided that for cost recovery, he would buy clippers and mow my hair as I mowed his lawn for him. Further ignominy, as "mops" of the Beatles and the British were not in dad's repertoire of haircuts. Context & Contrast The barbershops of my youth provided context, and the movie Barbershop offers a sharp contrast from a different socioeconomic setting and a different era. This isn't greasy kid stuff, but an oeuvre into a different world with different dress, different rules, and different haircuts, but some of the same basic aspirations and human problems. This barbershop exists in a poor south Chicago African-American neighborhood. The fables told are not so much ethnic or racial, but parables about human foibles from any community, but in this case dressed up in hip-hop garb and sometimes expressed in thick African-American patois. Calvin's barbershop offers a far cry from my suburban white-boy haircuts and barbershop experiences. Barbershop, as written by Mark Brown and directed by Tim Story provides a different slice of life in the day of this barbershop but also reflects back on its past and is haunted by the spirit of Calvin's father still observing the action from a mural. Those Controversial Remarks The movie is propelled by dynamic characters perhaps a bit unidimensional, but who nonetheless grab you and make you think. The movie has been disrespected, which then paradoxically brought it even more into the limelight, by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. They told us not to see this movie because it was disrespectful to black icons such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Jackson maladroitly says that Golda Meir is not to be joked about, so it's the maternal Israeli prime minister against the disobedient Jim Crow bus rule-breaker—do we really need to pair a great Jewish woman with a righteous American Black woman who refused to obey an unjust law? I guess only Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson can be the guardians and mouthpieces for what is politically correct and to know what we can see, hear, and understand. Despite the politically incorrect attitude not only tolerated but expected in this barbershop, it demonstrated that all points of view were in bounds and fair game in that atmosphere. King and Parks are great American heroes who are also human. Rather than being diminished by the movie, they provide the means to underscore the outrageousness of the character of Eddy the barber, played by Cedric the Entertainer. Quieting Eddy's speech is un-American and inappropriate as it shapes his character. Calvin's father's spirit haunts this Barbershop, which continues perhaps to be overpopulated with commentators and philosophers that do not sufficiently cut and clip to collect revenue to pay the shop's rent. Calvin is credibly played by Ice Cube, struggling to make the shop break even, with hare-brained schemes to strike it rich. Calvin staffs his chairs with a cast of characters who have more tonic observations and arguments than hair tonic for their clientele. Eddie, in addition to dissing Rosa Parks and MLK, Jr., is the rogue "old man" barber who does more reminiscing and less hair-cutting than anyone else in the shop. His coif is hardly an advertisement for a good haircut, with tufts of white hair punctuating mostly wild disarray, evoking Don King's hairdo with a part. In addition to his untamed Afro, his string of malapropisms frame an unruly character, who reminded me of Kingfish, from the maligned, but groundbreaking TV series "Amos 'n' Andy." Echoes in "Amos 'n' Andy", 'The Honeymooners,' 'The Flintstones' Like Barbershop, Amos 'n' Andy portrayed the schemers, petty scoundrels, and less than savory types who really are found in any neighborhood of any ethnic and racial makeup. I say "groundbreaking," because Amos 'n' Andy had the scheming skinny Kingfish always luring fat Andy into some muddled scheme, which had to be kept secret from the much wiser and mainstream women like Sapphire, Kingfish's wife. The same character and plot-line was followed in The Honeymooners, with Jackie Gleason playing a rotund version of Kingfish as Ralph Kramden to Art Carney's anorectic version of Andy. Later in cartoons, we had the Flintstones following the same pattern with rotund Fred Flintstone and diminutive Barney Rubble. Calvin's desperate "get rich quick" schemes follow this reliable road, the well-trod path to destruction, as well. Calvin's wife, about 10 months pregnant, but purposeful and steady, with a serious affection and loyalty to Calvin, provides an attractive alternative to Amos 'n' Andy's Sapphire or The Honeymooners' droll and patient Alice Kramden. The barbers in Calvin's shop are each "types," although some would object that they are stereotypes, but are played with perfection and skill, one and all. Eddie alone is worth the price of admission, since his character has the most fun and has garnered the opprobrium from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Michael Ealy plays Ricky as the tattooed pretty boy/bad boy, who has been convicted of two felonies, served time, but seemingly straightened out only to inexplicably bring a pistol to work. Ricky's major foil is the university-trained know-it-all, Jimmy James, played by Sean Patrick Thomas. He baits his fellow barbers constantly with his superiority and mean-streaked smugness that uses knowledge as a weapon. Who really cares if a scallop is or is not a mollusk? The only female barber, Terri Jones (Eve), has a philandering boyfriend as well as love-struck attention from Dinka's, the sweet sweep-up man from West Africa. One should be warned not to mess with her apple juice. She has little shrift for the chubby Dinka until an epic confrontation in the shop. The characters dwelling in Calvin's are mostly African American, including checker players, hipsters, and a postman. The final barber, Isaac (Troy Garity), is the only white guy around, but is also the butt of Jimmy's barbs. This white hip-hopper, the last to sidle into the shop, is a black-wanna-be with the bulky Cadillac Escalade and African American baby doll girlfriend. He occupies what seems to be the apprentice chair at Calvin's. At this Barbershop, all types are welcome and everyone is entitled to their point of view, the more controversial and outrageous the better. Calvin metes out justice, and one knows that he desperately wants to do the right thing, for the Shop and for his wife, and for his Dad who looks at him each day from the mural. Two Competing Subplots In addition to the characters, two subplots compete for laughs. Ricky, the felon turned barber, loans his truck to his cousin, JD, played by Anthony Anderson. Cousin JD and his henchman heist the ATM machine from the urban pioneer Indian's grocery. They spend the movie trying to open the ATM and get the $50,000 they think is inside. The ATM is empty of cash, but provides some of the sweetener for the final icing of this movie. The other subplot involves the baby-blue-clad and Continental loan shark Lester (Keith David), who prances in with a wad of unresistible 20s in a manila envelop. This ghetto greedmonger and his goon squad try chicanery to wrest the Barbershop from Calvin to turn it into a gentleman's club, to take advantage of the community rather than give back to it. He offers to buy the shop from a vulnerable, weak Calvin, who realized that the import of the shop is larger than he imagined. His need for cash and to be free of the liability transiently blinded him from the value of the shop to the entire community. By the time he comes to his senses, Lester has upped the ante to unfairly profit from his mistake. The swing between plots offers comedic pauses, but the movie may have been more fun without the ATM robbery distraction. Within this subplot, they are continuously moving the heavy ATM machine. At JD's third floor walk-up, a huge brother invariably and unreasonably blocks the stairs as JD tries lugging the dead weight up the stairs, and drops it on his foot. The exaggerated throbbing foot provides the only medical funny in this political satire and takeoff of some pretty fixed and tired situations. While the movie is PG, some of the subject matter and language may offend some eyes and ears. Barbershop is a riot, though, for those who can find humor in other people's struggles—perhaps stereotypes for some, but listen up and you might just get a legitimate insight, and some empathy and wisdom too. Resolution of the action will leave you smiling, maybe even hip-hopping out of the theater. Go see it. It made me laugh out loud, and I boogied down the exit to a few giggles as the credits rolled. Oncology-Times.com Check www.oncology-times.com for basic information about OT. Although the articles are available as yet only in the print edition, the Web site does have a Table of Contents list of all articles starting in January 2001.