"Beginners" and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
"Beginners"
starring: Ewan McGregor, Melanie Laurent, Christopher Plummer, Goran Visnjic
written and directed by: Mike Mills
I think I've fallen in love with French actress Melanie Laurent. She is absolutely adorable. Such a cute nose. Expressive and mesmerizing eyes. And just-messy-enough blonde hair. She is the epitome of the cute girl next door, nearly perfect as the almost manic pixie dream girl, but with enough substance to steer clear of that stereotype.
My adoration for Melanie Laurent aside, "Beginners" is a great film with a bizarre title that I never really understood like I did the actual film. It's a beautiful rediscovering of self in the form of a man, Oliver (McGregor) who is 38 years old when his father passes away and he finds himself beginning his life, all over again, thanks in large part to inheriting his deceased father's dog, a Jack Russell named Arthur. Five years before his father passed away, he also came out as gay (a crucial aspect of who Oliver has become nowadays). That's what this film's story explores: the idea that from the moment we are born, we become imprinted by outside forces (namely our parents, and also what we see as their relationship), and thus begin a very swift act of sweet rebellion against them and all that they are, which is just simply a reaction to all that we see, and therefore a confirmation of their influence on us, and that is the undeniable truth to who we are and who we become, as much as we try to fight it, it is inevitable.
The director, Mike Mills, does a good job of presenting us Oliver, right at the beginning of the film, so that we think Oliver is himself, before we really get to know him. He is at a party. He is hitting on a cute French actress (Laurent) named Anna. His pattern of speech, his quirks, his method of pitching himself in order to woo this French actress, all seems like him, but it has been created.
When he meets Anna, Oliver is also working on an art project, called "the history of sadness," as a sort of way of dealing with and getting past his father's death. The film itself is a collage of Oliver as a person: who he is, who he was, and who he will be, especially as he falls in love with Anna. It's Oliver's grief that first sparks an interest from Anna, as she is also struck with a case of laryngitis at the party and cannot speak, but rather must resort to writing on a notepad. Both new lovers are wounded and that brings them closer together as a couple, but also one of the reasons why they end up struggling. It's a great film that explores self-discovery, through death and a new romance that sees its ups and downs.
"You think you're you," is something that Oliver tells to Arthur, the dog, but it's almost like he is trying to convince himself of that sentiment.
This is a great film and definitely worth watching, maybe even twice.
....................................................................................
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
starring: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Dylan McDermott, Kate Walsh, Nina Dobrev, Johnny Simmons, Ezra Miller, Paul Rudd
written and directed by: Stephen Chbosky (novel by: Stephen Chbosky)
Some films are supposed to hurt. Some films hurt because they ring true. Some films ring true because they hit home with an emotional cord that cannot be denied. And some films hurt so good, you forget you're hurting while watching it. Some films pay homage to predecessors without feeling like a rip off. Some films get things right really well. Some films are about adolescence as a struggle.
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is everything I just said. I was fortunate enough to read the book when it first came out years ago, when it was touted as the newest "Catcher in the Rye." And it is everything, as a literary piece of work, that the hype builds it up to be, and even more because it presents us with a real, sympathetic teenage boy, with a real struggle that makes him feel like he could be any one of us. Each new revelation that author/script writer/director Chbosky puts in front of us, hits us hard enough to leave a bruise. I think it is a rare treat for a novel to get the same screenplay writer, and even rarer for the author/script writer to direct his own words as well. It's the trifecta of novels-turned-films. It's a treat, because whose eyes are better to convey the words than the person who wrote the words?
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" hurts so good because it depicts adolescence almost nearly as perfectly as any John Hughes film that preceded it. Everything about adolescence is put under the microscope: anxiety, loneliness, first love, and even homosexuality (which Hughes didn't really have the nerve to tackle, or maybe did not feel the need to back in the 1980s). Hurt is universal, as stated in the film by Charlie (a perfectly cast unknown Logan Lerman, who sort of looks like a poor man's Adam Brody) when he says, "There's so much pain, and I don't know how to not notice it."
This is a definite must-see, especially for anyone who read and enjoyed Chbosky's novel, and before that, "Catcher in the Rye" as a stepping stone into adolescence.
starring: Ewan McGregor, Melanie Laurent, Christopher Plummer, Goran Visnjic
written and directed by: Mike Mills
I think I've fallen in love with French actress Melanie Laurent. She is absolutely adorable. Such a cute nose. Expressive and mesmerizing eyes. And just-messy-enough blonde hair. She is the epitome of the cute girl next door, nearly perfect as the almost manic pixie dream girl, but with enough substance to steer clear of that stereotype.
My adoration for Melanie Laurent aside, "Beginners" is a great film with a bizarre title that I never really understood like I did the actual film. It's a beautiful rediscovering of self in the form of a man, Oliver (McGregor) who is 38 years old when his father passes away and he finds himself beginning his life, all over again, thanks in large part to inheriting his deceased father's dog, a Jack Russell named Arthur. Five years before his father passed away, he also came out as gay (a crucial aspect of who Oliver has become nowadays). That's what this film's story explores: the idea that from the moment we are born, we become imprinted by outside forces (namely our parents, and also what we see as their relationship), and thus begin a very swift act of sweet rebellion against them and all that they are, which is just simply a reaction to all that we see, and therefore a confirmation of their influence on us, and that is the undeniable truth to who we are and who we become, as much as we try to fight it, it is inevitable.
The director, Mike Mills, does a good job of presenting us Oliver, right at the beginning of the film, so that we think Oliver is himself, before we really get to know him. He is at a party. He is hitting on a cute French actress (Laurent) named Anna. His pattern of speech, his quirks, his method of pitching himself in order to woo this French actress, all seems like him, but it has been created.
When he meets Anna, Oliver is also working on an art project, called "the history of sadness," as a sort of way of dealing with and getting past his father's death. The film itself is a collage of Oliver as a person: who he is, who he was, and who he will be, especially as he falls in love with Anna. It's Oliver's grief that first sparks an interest from Anna, as she is also struck with a case of laryngitis at the party and cannot speak, but rather must resort to writing on a notepad. Both new lovers are wounded and that brings them closer together as a couple, but also one of the reasons why they end up struggling. It's a great film that explores self-discovery, through death and a new romance that sees its ups and downs.
"You think you're you," is something that Oliver tells to Arthur, the dog, but it's almost like he is trying to convince himself of that sentiment.
This is a great film and definitely worth watching, maybe even twice.
....................................................................................
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
starring: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Dylan McDermott, Kate Walsh, Nina Dobrev, Johnny Simmons, Ezra Miller, Paul Rudd
written and directed by: Stephen Chbosky (novel by: Stephen Chbosky)
Some films are supposed to hurt. Some films hurt because they ring true. Some films ring true because they hit home with an emotional cord that cannot be denied. And some films hurt so good, you forget you're hurting while watching it. Some films pay homage to predecessors without feeling like a rip off. Some films get things right really well. Some films are about adolescence as a struggle.
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is everything I just said. I was fortunate enough to read the book when it first came out years ago, when it was touted as the newest "Catcher in the Rye." And it is everything, as a literary piece of work, that the hype builds it up to be, and even more because it presents us with a real, sympathetic teenage boy, with a real struggle that makes him feel like he could be any one of us. Each new revelation that author/script writer/director Chbosky puts in front of us, hits us hard enough to leave a bruise. I think it is a rare treat for a novel to get the same screenplay writer, and even rarer for the author/script writer to direct his own words as well. It's the trifecta of novels-turned-films. It's a treat, because whose eyes are better to convey the words than the person who wrote the words?
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" hurts so good because it depicts adolescence almost nearly as perfectly as any John Hughes film that preceded it. Everything about adolescence is put under the microscope: anxiety, loneliness, first love, and even homosexuality (which Hughes didn't really have the nerve to tackle, or maybe did not feel the need to back in the 1980s). Hurt is universal, as stated in the film by Charlie (a perfectly cast unknown Logan Lerman, who sort of looks like a poor man's Adam Brody) when he says, "There's so much pain, and I don't know how to not notice it."
In a series of letters narrated to an unknown friend, Charlie describes a rocky start to high school. He's quiet. He's smart. He likes to read. These three qualities make him an immediate outcast. But then he stumbles into a tribe of offbeat seniors, and the movie skids off the usual script into a province rich with joy and rutted with danger: sex, drugs, crushes.
Charlie (Logan Lerman) befriends Patrick (Ezra Miller), a cut-up with a complicated love life. He then meets Sam (Emma Watson), Patrick's stepsister, a sensitive beauty with low self-esteem and a messy past. "Welcome to the island of misfit toys," she says after learning the cause - one of them, anyway - of Charlie's pain. Watson has a convincing, translucent fragility about her, and anyone who caught Miller's ghoulish turn as a way-too-pretty mass killer in "We Need to Talk About Kevin" might be shocked by the warmth and woundedness he exhibits here.
The film is a bit imperfect, but in an endearing way, because the characters are rife with imperfections, and so is adolescence.This is a definite must-see, especially for anyone who read and enjoyed Chbosky's novel, and before that, "Catcher in the Rye" as a stepping stone into adolescence.
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