Tag / steve carell

by James Turrell

Vice

Director: Adam McKay 

Writer: Adam Mckay 

Adam McKay’s last film, 2015’s The Big Short, was a revelatory look at the reasons behind the collapse of the world economy in 2008. It was heavily stylised, but character driven, with Christian Bale and Steve Carrell putting in exquisite performances. McKay essentially took the clarity of Late Night American comedy and applied it to a feature film, The Big Short felt, at some level, like a two-hour segment of Last Week Tonight. McKay attempts to do the same thing with Vice, a film which deals with the life and politics of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. However, this time he is less successful, while The Big Short had enormous political and moral clarity, it also felt nuanced, whereas Vice feels scattershot and pourous.  

Much of the pre-release press for Vice centred around Christian Bale’s mammoth transformation, and his look in the film is all hair and make-up and the after effects of double-digit donuts. It is visually startling, an actor you accustomed to looking young and svelte is transformed into an aged and overweight man. Vice follows Dick Cheney from his bar-fighting, sleeping at the wheel 20’s up until he hoovers up untold power as the Veep to George W. Bush’s President (Sam Rockwell) from 2000-2008. The film has a broad scope and the narrative attempts to sketch out the entire life of Cheney. One of the film’s central pillars is that his quest for power and his unquenchable commitment to that quest, is drawn from is relationship with his wife, Lynne Cheney (Amy Adams). Lynne is very much the Lady Macbeth figure, a snorting fire-brand who compels the very worst aspect Cheney’s personality to action; his greed, his callousness, his corruption. Amy Adams is fantastic in the role; she plays a person driven by an uncomfortable desire for power to dominate others, and she sells it wonderfully. The film depicts their early relationship as turbulent, one in which she waits at home for Dick to arrive drunk once again. And it’s her impassioned speech for him to make her proud that seems to compel Dick to stop drinking and start politicking.  

Vice has a similar structure to The Big Short in the way in which we have a narrator who is also an aware character within the film, this time played nicely by Breaking Bad’s Jessie Plemons. His relationship to Cheney is perhaps the one true surprise fact of the film, which I will spoil for you now: they opened an abortion themed organic herb shop together called Pro-Chive. He explains in a similar way to Ryan Gosling’s character in The Big Short, the big theoretical concepts of the film, such as the Unitary Executive Theory. Steve Carrell is again on magnificent form playing Donald Rumsfeld and he portrays him in the style of a sitcom character turned pure evil. And Sam Rockwell’s W. is great as well, he captures that particular President’s capacity for endless confusion with precision.  

The central problem with Vice and what separates it from attaining the dramatic or comedic heights of The Big Short, is that McKay presents Cheney as the centre of the universe; a God-like figure whose every action affects the world in an infinite number of ways. The film portrays Cheney’s time as Vice President almost as an island, in which the outside has no effect on the actions he puts into place. Whether it be the military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the film is not shy about showing the brutal reality of, or domestic policy to the right of someone who has just had their right leg blown of, all these actions seem to happen with no relation to the outside world. McKay’s portrayal of the world seems to suggest one in which the actions of politicians are not guided by external events, that the actions of other countries have no bearing on the decision making of Cheney. This is where the film begins to struggle not to collapse because we are presented with a world that is implausible, where the characters make decisions that are devoid of the cold logic of reality.  

There is a lot to commend Vice, from the acting to the way it again explains high-concept political and economic ideas to people who might not otherwise have engaged with them. McKay is a heavily stylistic director and clearly draws influence from Adam Curtis in the way he mashes live-action with archival footage to create a grand, sweeping historical narrative. He former life as a writer of often simplistic, crude comedies still lingers and he sometimes struggles with writing straight, dramatic lines. ‘How does a man go onto to become who he is?, delivered with the utmost seriousness by Amy Adams, is particularly clunky example. But Vice is an enjoyable watch and McKay’s determination to write about big, difficult political ideas is to be admired, even if the result is not always perfect.  

7.5/10 

by James Turrell

Beautiful Boy

Writers: Felix van Groeningen & Luke Davies

Director: Felix van Groeningen

Since the release of Foxcatcher in 2014 and The Big Short in 2015, Steve Carell has become one of cinema’s most expressive and diverse dramatic actors. The line between comedic and dramatic acting has always been vastly overstated. As Better Call Saul showrunner Peter Gould said when referencing comedy legend Michael McKean’s dramatic turn; ‘if someone can be brilliant at being funny, it’s very easy for them to be brilliant at being dramatic. It’s not always so easy to go the other way.’ While Timothée Chalamet’s drug addicted Nick is Beautiful Boy’s narrative driver, Carell as his father David is the grief-torn, desperate protagonist.

Based on memoirs by journalist David Sheff and his son Nick, Beautiful Boy is centered upon Nick’s battle with addiction and the affect that has on the rest of his family. Nick’s addiction follows a familiar path, from rolled gateway innocence to the needle of no turning back. He recovers and relapses and recovers and relapses. Film’s that centre on something like addiction or a mental illness are defined by how realistic the representation is, and Beautiful Boy does well in that regard. Nick’s addiction is nuanced and based in reality, and the film avoids superficial Hollywood conclusions. Director Felix van Groeningen is not squeamish about showing the more brutal elements of Nick’s addiction, and we are shown multiple, unforgiving shots of Heroin injection. And the worst aspects of addiction are laid bare; stealing the savings of a 6 year old sibling a particularly black-hearted example.

However, this is very much Carell’s film and his anguish at his son’s behavior permeates every frame. Carell excels as a father torn apart by a desperation to understand why Nick uses. This failure to understand is a central theme of Groeningen and Davies’s script; the unknown defines the family members materially affected by drug addiction. You can never really know what causes an addict to destroy themselves unless you’ve caused your own forehead to bleed as well. David feels that a certain set of circumstances he can force Nick to go through will stop him using. But ultimately Nick will keep using until the day he finally stops, any abstinence before that is a very brief sojourn. Carell captures this pain wonderfully; his performance gives the film a heart-breaking rudder.

Chalamet’s performance is not quite as riveting. While Nick’s character has nuance, some of the expository scenes in which is addiction is formed are the film’s least engaging. We see clichéd close-frame shots of Nick’s bleary eyed high as the focus drains from the world around him while dissonant, ‘edgy’ music is overlaid. It’s a shot you’ve seen a million times from Trainspoting to 21 Grams and Beautiful Boy contains a few scenes in which narrative rigor and originality disappear. Whether it’s David finding Nick’s journal or pop songs referencing substance abuse playing over montage sequences of drug-use, there are occasions when the script and Groeningen’s direction become sloppy.

But overall Beautiful Boy is a very effective and moving piece of work. As someone with first-hand experience of living with a drug addict, the film has a commendable verisimilitude. Carell is excellent and Chalamet is very good, and the film also sports an excellent supporting turn from Maura Tierney as Nick’s step-mother Karen. There is a lovely sleight of hand in the third act, where Nick seems to have recovered fully and he gives a triumphant and moving speech to his support group. Only for him to fall far from the rails once more. The film could easily have ended there, leaving the audience draped in the glow of a happy but artificial sunlight. But it doesn’t. Nick relapses again and the film shows how with addiction there are no easy answers and Hallmark endings. Beautiful Boy is ultimately a moving film with some great performances that is overall an honest and heartfelt depiction of addiction, and the often tragic affect it has on those around them.

8/10