Maps to the Stars.

“Hollywood is a world that is seductive and repellent at the same time, and it is the combination of the two that makes it so potent.”[1] David Cronenburg latest cinematic outing is a comment on human nature, part satirical sendup of Hollywood, part dysfunctional family drama and part decent into madness. It was Ben Wagner’s screenplay that persuaded the Canadian director to make a film about Los Angeles located amongst Hollywood personalities.  Maps to the Stars (2014) is Cronenburg’s first film shot in the USA although many have been set there.

The jaded movie star.

The pyromaniac. 

Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) was a famous actress who is now aging and quickly fading, a women haunted by memories of her mother a famous movie star who abused her as a child to such an extent that she is still having therapy years after her mother died in a fire.  But this does not stop her wanting to play her mater in a remake of one of her most famous movies. The other main characters belong to the family Weiss. Father Sanford (John Cusack) is a celebrity TV psychologist, a man who see’s himself as a healer and who, incidentally, is in control of Havana’s therapy. Sanford and his wife Christina (Olivia Williams) are sister and brother; they were separated at birth and discovered their true relationship after meeting in college and becoming a couple. Christina also act’s as the manager of her precocious 13 year old son Benjie (Evan Bird), who after a stint at rehab when he was nine years old is attempting to put his movie career back on track while at the same time battling his demons. In to this potent mix we add Benjie’s sister Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) who has recently been released from a sanatorium where she was treated for criminal pyromania. Turning up in LA unannounced, still carrying the visible scars of her crime, she gets a job as the personnel assistant of Havana and attempts to re-engage with her family.

The healer who married his sister.

The manager who married her brother.

One very precocious brat. 

The strength of the film is in Wagner’s characters, the pull that LA has on them and finally how the narrative gradually reveals there complicated lives, secrets and fears. As well as a comedic tone there is a darkness that runs right throughout the movie with its unsettling observation of celebrity culture. This entertaining cross between Sunset Boulevard (1950) and 1999’s Magnolia won Julianne Moore yet another best actress award this time at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

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[1] David Cronenberg.

Still Alice.

My blog of the latest screening at the Film Club located at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre in Dumfries is based on the film Still Alice (2014), having never read Lisa Genova’s 2007 novel of the same name. It was Anne Barclay, our host for the evening, that informed us that the debut novel was originally self-published but when it started to receive a lot of attention it was acquired by Simon and Schuster who published it in 2009 and has since been translated into 31 languages. Originally adapted for the stage it run in Chicago between April 10^th and May 19^th 2013 before it was adapted for the big screen, directed by Richard Glatzer, who died of complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in March 2015, and his partner Wash Westmoreland.

 

Sharing an intimate moment with her husband.

The film stars Julianne Moore who won an Oscar for her role as Doctor Alice Howland a linguistics professor at Columbia University who is diagnosed with early onset familial Alzheimer’s disease. This term is used to describe cases of Alzheimer’s disease diagnosed before the age of sixty-five of which a person’s child can generically inherit, but otherwise shares the same traits as the late onset form of Alzheimer’s. The story demonstrates how the disease gradually affected Alice Howland along with the effects on the other members of her family, including her husband John (Alec Baldwin), her eldest daughter Anna (Kate Bosworth), her son Tom (Hunter Parrish) a junior doctor and Alice’s youngest daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart) an aspiring actor. The film picks up the story just as Alice is celebrating her fiftieth birthday and we witness her gradually loosing her word power while still carrying out lectures and how she forgets where she is during her daily jogging on the university campus. It’s after a visit to her doctor that the disease is diagnosed. This traumatic news resonates through her family, as her three children could also be carriers as well as the twins that Anna is carrying.

 

Alice's younger daughter played by Kristen Stewart.... 

....and her older daughter Anne (Kate Bosworth)

I can’t help but think how much better this film could be under the auspices of a British director, but don’t get me wrong Julianne Moore deserved her Oscar and the rest of the cast play their roles with conviction. My problem with the movie is that the gloss put on the film by the American directors hides to some extent the seriousness of its disturbing subject matter. A much more down to earth approach would have produced a far better film in my opinion. The subsidiary characters on display where not particular likable, in fact I would describe them as selfish minded - big teeth, big smiles in other words a typical middle class American family. The father refused to take time off work to be with his wife before the dementia finally took its toll, due, he claimed, to financial problems but he owned two houses!  Anna, who was due to give birth to twins, gave not a second thought to having the babies knowing that they could be also effected as she was. What I’m trying to say is that I could not empathies with any of these characters, other than possible Alice. A far better film that dealt with a similar subject was Away from Her made in 2006 by Canadian director Sarah Polly and starred Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie as a couple whose marriage is put to the test when Christie’s character begins to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Another film I would highly recommend on the subject of early onset Alzheimer’s is the South Korean movie Poetry (2010) directed by Lee Chang-dong. Both these films treat their subject matter in a very much more down to earth fashion, as I’ve said, something Still Alice lacks.  

 

What Maisie Knew.

Director:	Scott McGehee, David Siegel
Country:	USA
Year:	2012
Running Time:	93 mins
Principle Cast:	Julianne Moore	Susanna
	Steve Coogan	Beale
	Onata Aprile	Maisie Elizabeth Beale
	Alexander Skarsgard	Lincoln
	Joanna Vanderham	Margo

Some people don’t deserve children! And that definitely includes Susanna, a fifty something rock and roll star who dresses like underage trailer trash and still thinks she can cut it sexually and on the road, and her husband Beale a charming, slightly sleazy art dealer. Both of these rich ‘Manhattanites’ hate one another and certainly do not take their responsibilities seriously when it comes to bringing up their seven-year-old daughter Maisie. When these two get an acrimonious divorce Maisie gets shared between them, but generally gets left in the care of each of their new partners, ex-nanny Margo and bar man Lincoln and its left to this young child to make decision’s well beyond her age.

The film has been adapted from a Henry James novel that was first published in 1897 and has been transposed to modern day New York City. This relationship drama, made for adult audiences, is seen thru the eyes of a child and even some of Giles Nuttgens cinematography is shot from Maisie’s eye level.

Following the film at the EIFF a short Q&A was conducted with Perthshire born Joanna Vanderham last seen in Stephan Poliakoff’s highly acclaimed TV Drama series Dancing on the Edge. She explained that she was contacted by her agent whilst filming in Glasgow and told that she was wanted for a part in a film that was to be made in America. Within a very short space of time she found herself in New York playing Margo in her first full-length feature film. The part, which was not necessarily written for someone with a Scottish accent, stretched her emotional acting ability. She went on to tell us that it was very special working with the talented Onata Aprile, who because of her age had restricted working hours.

 

Joanna Venderham takes part in the Q&A.

One can’t help but ask how a young girl could be so level headed when she has spent her first seven years parented by a pair of obnoxious and unlikable people. But the directors, with the help of a tremendous cast pull it off. There are times in the film when you, the audience, truly worry for the safety of a young child and the film would have been even more heart rendering if the character of Maisie had not stood up so well, tackling her hardships with such strength and fortitude.  Which I must admit is down to the brilliant acting of Onata Aprile who I believe has a very bright future.