Ralph Fiennes in The Return
THE RETURN
Not that the material demanded or invited it, but I think I now know why Ralph Fiennes was never seen out of his clerical robe in Conclave. Because if we ever saw him shirtless, or even got a gander at his bare arms, that entire papal drama would've collapsed through one simple question: “How did a cloistered, late-middle-aged cardinal get so freakin' jacked?!”
Filming for Conclave was completed in March of 2023, roughly a month before Fiennes began shooting The Return, director/co-writer Uberto Pasolini's take on the last portions of Homer's epic poem Odyssey. So unless the performer indulged in an insane, potentially lethal amount of steroids in between projects, Fiennes' beneath-the-robe body in Conclave probably looked much like it does in Pasolini's film: ripped and sinewy and taut as hell. What a weird season for our revered character actors this is turning out to be. First, 69-year-old J.K. Simmons shows up all sweaty and muscly (as Santa Claus!) in Red One, and now, Fiennes spends roughly a third of his role as Odysseus wearing next to nothing (in a couple of scenes, literally nothing) and looking fiercer at 61 – he'll be 62 on December 22 – than most A-lister males do in their 20s and 30s. If he's boasting more than 5-percent body fat here, I'd be shocked. But if you can get past the disorientation of seeing Ralph Fiennes with bulging biceps and a six-pack, you'll also be treated to a deeply intelligent, heartbreakingly soulful portrayal that gives this prosaic, incessantly bleak adaptation every reason in the world to exist.
As you may recall, Odysseus was the fabled Greek king who spent a decade fighting the Trojan War and another decade attempting to return home. Co-written by John Collee and Edward Bond, Pasolini's feature opens with a nude, badly damaged Odysseus lying face down on the beach, having finally made it back to his native Ithica. After he's discovered and taken to shelter, Odysseus learns that his kingdom has fallen into squalor and savagery, his son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) hounded by locals and visitors who want him dead, and those same men acting as “suitors” to Odysseus' beloved wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche), who refuses to believe that her husband is gone forever. Odysseus must consequently return to his kingdom and reclaim his throne before Penelope is forced to marry and a new king is anointed – a plan of attack that would be easier for Odysseus if he weren't so racked with guilt for being the only one of his countrymen to survive the war.
Maybe it's due to my hazy memories of the collegiate 101 course during which I first read Homer's Odyssey, but I don't remember the former Ithican ruler being quite so conscience-stricken in the original text. Odysseus, initially refusing to identify himself, did indeed dress in rags and disguise himself as a beggar, as he does in the movie. But that choice was justified as a way for him to spy on the citizenry and goings-on inside his house; unlike Fiennes' Odysseus, Homer's didn't seem to feel he deserved to be treated like crap. The Return is all Odysseus feeling deserving of crap treatment. Although Pasolini's film follows Homer's narrative quite faithfully, there are areas in which it significantly diverges from its source material: most significantly, the Greek gods and goddesses are wholly absent, and as was almost bound to happen, the script features a conspicuous lack of poetry. (There something discombobulating about a Homer adaptation whose dialogue is so filled with contractions.) Yet I was less bothered by those changes than the decision to make Odysseus so relentlessly dour. “Regretful” should be only part of a personality package that includes “incensed,” “passionate,” and “hell-bent,” and until The Return's final scenes, Fiennes isn't given nearly enough opportunities to showcase Odysseus' range – or his own range.
What the actor is asked to do, though, he does magnificently, recounting Odysseus' lost years with halting cascades of unimaginable guilt and sorrow, his baleful eyes yearning for a forgiveness he knows he hasn't earned. And when Odysseus and Penelope have their first, shadowy encounter after 20 years, Fiennes and Binoche collectively produce the quietest fireworks imaginable – he clearly dying (yet unable) to admit who he truly is; she clearly dying (yet unable) to see him for who he truly is. For viewers who demand a snappy pace, this sequence, with its weighted pauses lasting 30 seconds or more, will be endless. For those of us who would happily watch the one-time English Patient co-stars do nothing but glare at one another for a full two hours, it's ravishingly powerful, each microscopic flicker of changing awareness and intent enlarging the already sizable lumps in our throats.
There's a lot that's wrong with The Return, beginning with Pasolini's idea, if it was even his, to name his release The Return in the first place. (Has there ever been a more generic title given to a saga so inherently filled with drama? Don't tell me that going with Odyssey would've violated copyright law 2,700 years after publication.) Plummer is a dishearteningly empty Telemachus, all pissy grievance and unconvincing swagger, while Marwan Kenzari's blithe, affectless readings don't hint at the perverse cruelty of his Antinous. Pasolini doesn't appear to have much of an eye for epic, or even interesting, staging; the compositions are generally bland two-shots that even cinematographer Marius Panduru's occasionally evocative lighting can't salvage. Plus, as much as I loved the time spent on Odysseus' and Penelope's protracted near-reunion, the film is frequently listless to the point of abject tedium. If we had a nickel for every time we were forced to watch miserable Penelope slowly, slo-o-o-owly toiling away at her loom, working on a shawl that she never intends to finish … . Well, we'd have about 30 cents. That's still way too much weaving!
Blessedly, though, we also have Fiennes. And best of all, we have Fiennes in the most satisfying segment of Odyssey that Pasolini and his co-scribes wisely leave alone: the climactic stringing of Odysseus' bow, and the shooting of an arrow through a dozen ax-heads, and the bloody massacre that results when our star, again half-naked, shows off his astounding physicality while making bloody mincemeat out of nearly everyone in sight. For a movie that previously reserved its most blatantly emotional moment for the death of a dog (and that bit slayed me), The Return finally comes roaring to life right before its finale, when you're reminded just how juicy – figuratively and literally – this dusty ol' classic actually is. Would that Pasolini kept more of the fun of the original text, which was likely the BC equivalent of a page-turning potboiler. To be sure, Fiennes and, when she's not merely looming, Binoche manage to hold your interest. But what they've been recruited for, alas, is no Homer. D'oh!
Y2K
Directed, in his feature-filmmaking debut, and co-written by longtime Saturday Night Live co-star Kyle Mooney, Y2K is an end-of-days comedy without one truly decent joke, which is bad enough. What makes it borderline-insufferable is that with the exception of Mooney himself, it doesn't boast anyone capable of still being funny under unfunny circumstances … and our teen hero's parents are played by Alicia Silverstone and Tim Heidecker. Their casting is far more amusing than anything either performer gets to say or do.
The film's hook is that it's New Year's Eve 1999, and everything that everyone who was hoarding bottled water and canned goods feared would happen does happen: Our computers go berserk, our electronics fail, and pandemonium ensues – principally because said electronics, and all electronic devices, are now actively trying to kill us. It's by no means a bad slapstick premise, even if it takes roughly half of Mooney's and co-screenwriter Evan Winter's blessedly brief 93-minute running length to get to it. Yet after an admirably gory sequence at a high-school blowout that finds an electric razor slitting a dude's throat and a working blender attaching itself to another guy's crotch, all comic inspiration seems to vanish, right along with any semblance of interior logic.
As a group of teen misfits go on the lam in search of either a safe space or an end to the madness, we learn that the town's electronic devices, tired of being treated as slaves, have decided to turn humanity into their slaves, the monolithic leader (assembled from a conglomeration of other devices) asserting that after implanting microchips in the townsfolk's foreheads, the electronic beings will use these victims to take over the world. But hold on. So this Y2K catastrophe is only taking place in one U.S. city? If that's the case, was the timing of the attack on midnight of January 1 just a weirdly timed coincidence and a not a global event? And if that's the case, why do the kids witness two planes crashing into one another mid-air, theoretically because their electronics went afoul? Did they come from two separate airports on opposite sides of town? I doubt that Mooney and Winter wanted us to think too hard about the minute-to-minute minutiae of their Y2K, and for good reason. Spending even five minutes exploring the reasons behind my “Huh?”s gave me a massive headache.
This is where a topnotch team of inspired comedians would certainly have come in handy, as happened when Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike, and Pierce Brosnan appeared in 2013's The World's End, and when nearly everyone else in entertainment co-starred in This Is the End later that year. And those movies had solid scripts! (In the case of This Is the End, probably more like solid long-form improv.) Mooney's young leads Jaeden Martell (It and Knives Out), Rachel Zegler (West Side Story and the most recent Hunger Games) and Julian Dennison (the New Zealander star of Taika Waititi's The Hunt for the Wilderpeople) are charming presences and fine actors. They're not, however, particularly funny actors, and with the humor here generally ranging from weakly underplayed to depressingly juvenile – especially whenever the electronic behemoth spews ninth-grader insults – this halfhearted lark proves sorely in need of someone with true comedic fire. On numerous past occasions, that's been Mooney himself. But the director/writer/performer doesn't do himself any favors, upon his introduction as a stoner video-store manager, by slowly creeping the camera in for a closeup so none of us will fail to recognize him. And he really doesn't aid his cause by giving himself the movie's centerpiece action-comedy setup, with viewers waiting forever just so his character can prep for an encounter that has the exact dismal punchline we anticipate. It's been 25 years since 1999, and without trying terribly hard, you could name at least 25 better comedies released in 1999 than 2024's Y2K.
A DIFFERENT MAN and BETWEEN THE TEMPLES
As of this writing, it's been almost a full week since the 2024-25 awards season kicked off in earnest with last Monday's presentation of the New York-based Gotham Awards, an event subsequently followed by: the winners of the National Board of Review and New York and Los Angeles Film Critics associations; the reveal of the American Film Institute's annual Top 10 list; the nominees for independent cinema's Spirit Awards (huzzah to Scott Beck and Bryan Woods – local favorites and owners of Davenport's The Last Picture House – for their Best Screenplay citation for Heretic!); and this morning's announcement of Golden Globes contenders. Over the next few months, I'll try to get to as many award-winning gaps in my '24-viewing completion as possible – a number of these available-for-rental-and-purchase titles, including the two discussed here, having previously screened at Iowa City's FilmScene venues when I was unable to catch them. As always: Thank you for your service, FilmScene. I'd be there more often if I had more time on my hands and a more reliable car.
One of the movies I was most bummed to not view in Iowa City was writer/director Aaron Schimberg's A Different Man, which today earned Sebastian Stan a Globes nod for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical, and last week, in a considerable surprise, nabbed the Gothams' Best Picture prize over competitors that included Anora and Challengers. (The early score for Different Man: 15 love.) I generally adore Stan because, despite his handsomeness, he seems the complete antithesis of a traditional Hollywood star: an actor who only seems comfortable on-screen – truly himself – in the wildly divergent skin of someone else entirely. And surely, you can't get much further from Marvel's Bucky Barnes than Stan's role as Schimberg's Edward Lemuel, a wannabe NYC actor whose chief impediment, beyond his questionable talent, would appear to be his neurofibromatosis that has severely disfigured his face.
Believing his visage to be the cause of all his problems, Edward volunteers for an experimental program that will give him the face of … well, of Sebastian Stan … and the experiment is a success. It's when his playwright neighbor Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), presuming that the “old” Edward has committed suicide, writes a play about her tragic acquaintance that things really start getting hairy. Because after Edward, through disingenuous circumstances, lands the role of his old self in Ingrid's new off-Broadway play based on Edward's presumed life (and, somewhat gallingly, even titled Edward), who should walk in the rehearsal room but Oswald (Adam Pearson), an insidiously charming bon vivant whose bonhomie appeals to everyone. Everyone, that is, but Edward, given that Oswald also has facially deformative neurofibromatosis, yet who seemingly hasn't let that fact prevent him from being the life of the party. Every party.
From start to finish, I adored Schimberg's quasi-sci-fi, adroitly Kaufman-esque comedy, which gives us a character inherently worth rooting for and, even before the film is half-over, makes us wonder whether we should ever have been rooting for him at all. We've been forever taught “it's what's on the inside that counts,” and it's easy to project your ideas about Edward's inner self when you see Ingrid initially blanch at his countenance, or see a trio of subway louts snicker at him, or watch as he and Ingrid have dinner out at a window-side table and one passerby after another winces in disgust or, in one instance, actively provokes him. Yet after Edward is rid of his facial deformity, it turns out that he's a bit of an asshole. In all fairness, Edward's “closest friends” are no prizes, either. Ingrid, delectably played by Norwegian The Worst Person in the World breakout Reinsve, is a flighty, fickle figure who has no compunction about shaping her play – and drastically reducing Edward's involvement – based on daily whims. And Oswald, whose marvelous portrayer Pearson (who himself has neurofibromatosis) is likely best known as one of Scarlett Johansson's victims in 2014's Under the Skin, is the worst kind of charmer: one who masks his self-absorption with compliments and courtesy, hoping you'll fail to notice how all his refracted light is designed to shoot back solely on him.
Yet as A Different Man progresses, regardless of your feelings about the “real” Edward, you find yourself steadfastly in his corner regardless, loathing yet wholly understanding his actions as he makes continual messes for himself that lead to career destruction, hospitalization, and worse. I laughed harder and harder the more that things sucked for this poor, pathetic soul, and Stan plays his gorgeously contradictory role to the hilt, never downplaying the tragedy yet always cognizant of the richness of its comedy. Between Schimberg's release (available for a fantastically reasonable $9.99 rental through Prime Video) and his equally, deservedly, Globe-cited performance as Donald Trump in The Apprentice, you could argue that no one is having a better 2024 movie year than Sebastian Stan. Unless, that is, you include those of us privileged to have seen him in both.
Right after watching A Different Man – though I was certainly tempted to immediately start that movie over again – I returned to my Amazon Prime account to rent (for a bargain-basement $5.99) director/co-writer Nathan Silver's Between the Temples, which garnered Carol Kane a massively unanticipated Best Supporting Actress prize from the New York Film Critics Circle. Having seen the film, I get the massive lack of anticipation. Silver's and co-screenwriter's shaggy-dog comedy is slight, meandering, a bit unfocused, and its visual style could be charitably described as “early-'70s aesthetic” when what is actually meant is “grainy and ugly.” But for the love of Pete – it's Carol Kane, appearing in what is perhaps her most expansive, significant screen role since she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for 1975's (!!!) Hester Street. Paired opposite Jason Schwartzman, she's utterly extraordinary here – a freewheeling Maude to his Harold – and crucially essential given that no one beyond Dianne Wiest could conceivably have played Kane's part. And as great at Wiest is, her loopy bravado wouldn't have seemed so spontaneous.
Silver's and co-writer C. Mason Wells' narrative principally involves the life crisis of Schwartzman's Ben Gottlieb, a recently widowed cantor at his local synagogue who has lost both his singing voice and reason for being. I'll admit that my defenses were up roughly 10 minutes into the movie, when Ben positioned himself in the street hoping an approaching truck would forever end his troubles. (Issues of morality aside, a slapstick suicide attempt is never funny – it's merely a cheap way to demonstrate misery without acknowledging the inconsolable sadness behind the act.) Soon enough, though, Ben is brought out of his debilitating funk via the convenient arrival of his former grade-school music teacher Carla Kessler, a septuagenarian who tends to her former student after a bar fight, drives him home, and eventually reveals that she would love to, at long last, have a bat mitzvah, with Ben conducting the ceremony. Did I mention that Carol Kane plays Carla? Did I need to?
There are several awkwardly presented comic scenarios in Silver's feature – among them a literally regurgitated one involving Ben's consumption of non-kosher hamburgers – and a fair amount of narrative confusion. I'm still unsure about whether Ben's moms, well-played by Caroline Aaron and Dolly De Leon, are lovers or simply his birth mother and step-mother who happen to live together, and the movie boasts some unpleasant, unresolved tones when Carla introduces Ben to her son played by Matthew Shear, and you can't tell if your discomfort is based on the situation or on Shear being a particularly inept actor. Yet Schwartzman, who continues to grow as a wonderfully expressive screen presence, is terrific. And his co-star, God bless her, is divine, even though the dizzying mass of contradictions that is Carla Kessler only makes sense with a presence as naturally eccentric and gifted as Carol Kane, who grounds her instinctively nutty readings and unmistakable vocal timbre with wellsprings of genuine poignancy. I doubt her NYFCC win will make Kane an Oscar nominee again after 49 years. Who cares? Give her a statue. Give her a parade. In the meantime, give her your attention, and let's thank Silver for giving her, and us, Between the Temples.
